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GETTING A LIVING 

The Problem of 
Profits, Wages and Trade Unionism 



•V)^^° 



GETTING A LIVING 



THE PROBLEM OF WEALTH AND 

POVERTY— OF PROFITS, WAGES 

AND TRADE UNIONISM 



By 

GEORGE L. BOLEN 

Author of Plain Facts as to the Trusts and the Tariff 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd 
1903 



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Copyright, 1903, by 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up, Electrotyped and Printed 
October, 190? 



THE MASON PRESS 
SYRACUSE • NEW YORK 



To Those in Every Class 

WHO ARE ABLE AND WILLING TO ACKNOWLEDGE 

THE WHOLE TRUTH AS IT APPEARS, 

WHETHER FAVORABLE OR UNFAVORABLE TO PREVIOUS OPINIONS 

WHOSE DEEPEST LOYALTY IS NOT TO PARTY OR CAUSE 

BUT TO ETERNAL RIGHT AND JUSTICE — 



^i)ii3 ^oofe in E)e!iicateli 



WITH THE BELIEF THAT THEY. TO WHOM HAS BEEN COMMITTED 

THE WELFARE AND PROGRESS OF HUMANITY, 

WILL SO INCREASE IN NUMBERS AND INFLUENCE, WITH THE SPREAD 

OF KNOWLEDGE, THAT SOCIETY'S SPLENDID HERITAGE 

OF CIVILIZATION WILL NOT THIS TIME 

?E WASTED OR SET BACK AS IN THE PAST, BUT WILL CONTINUE. AND 

AT A QUICKENING RATE, TO RISE IN FRUITFULNESS FOR 

EVERY CREATURE MADE IN THE 

IMAGE OF GOD 



PREFACE. 



To remedy society's manv ills, and to attain its magnificent 
possibilities, the all-inclusive need of course is knowledge of 
nature's economic and sociological laws, whose observance by 
men, or non-observance, makes society at any time what it is. 
To a large extent the same is true of such knowledge with each 
person individually. 

The belief that this knowledge can be sufficiently possessed 
by the people in general appeared in the establishment of popu- 
lar government, and appears now, stronger and more wide- 
spread than ever before, in the dissemination of information by 
state labor bureaus and by economic societies, and in the un- 
precedented interest in sociological study among preachers and 
teachers, trade unionists, literary club women, and the thought- 
ful in every class. It seems to be true that "all economists 
and labor bodies agree that education in economics is the great 
desideratum for working people," and, it may be added, for all 
other people. Hence, in view of the present interest, and of 
the general study of economics since the rise of trade unionism 
twenty years ago, the reason why so few have other than a hazy 
idea of the problem of wealth and poverty seems not to be 
indifference ; nor is it lack of knowledge to be studied, for the 
investigators and economists have found out nearly enough in 
most particulars what the truth is. The trouble seems to be 
that its scattered form has made this truth inaccessible to all 
not having the mind, the time, and the money to study scores 
of books and hundreds of reports and periodicals, and to pick 
out the truth from a mass of error. 

The purpose in writing this book, therefore, is to give the 
connected and somewhat complete view that all intelligent citi- 



Preface. 

zens should have of the many economic divisions of the great 
problem of labor and life, but which, for the reason stated above 
it seems, is possessed now by perhaps less than a tenth of even 
college graduates. That there is no necessity for having this 
most important of perhaps all fields of knowledge thus closed, 
seems to be evident in the approach to its mastery by tens of 
thousands of men using mere common sense, without ever 
having read a chapter on economics ; and that the ordinary 
sensible man can and w411 go to some depth into its intricacies 
is indicated by his abundance of ideas on its topics, and by his 
easy perception of its finer distinctions. 

Sufficient reason for the author's writing of this book exists 
in the apparent fact that the service is needed and desired, and 
is not being performed. But as few are so well prepared to 
judge conclusions that to them the authorship is a matter of 
indifference, and as generally one's class connection affects 
materially his ideas of wealth and poverty, it seems pertinent 
for the author to state here the combination of experiences and 
circumstances that apparently gives him special fitness for the 
task undertaken. In the printing business carried on for nine 
years by him and his partner they do themselves most of their 
skilled work, and hence are directly benefited by high wages, 
since such wages keep up prices, but hiring others gives them 
also the usual interests of the employer. The author's experi- 
ence has been varied — in over three unbroken years of child 
labor, beginning at eleven ; in failing and succeeding, as em- 
ployer and employee, in the latter capacity in several occupa- 
tions ; in small industries and large ; in striking and being struck 
against; in North and South, in primitive country districts, in 
the large cities, and at great mines ; in circumstances of special 
application to socialistic discussion, such as close taxing of 
strength, as being held until near middle life at work not the 
most suitable, and as general non-realization so far of hopes 
ordinarily deemed commendable. 

The fact that these experiences have been commonplace, a 
tempting in all points such as anybody passes through, and 
especially the fact that they are going on still and arc likely to 
continue, — seem to be advantageous for interpreting the prin- 
ciples of getting a living: and the same may be said of a 
connection with trades, classes, and sections loose enough in 



Preface. 

each case to favor impartiality of judgment, which is facihtated 
also by two years of university study long ago, and by an 
intention from youth up to follow as a profession the popular- 
izing through journalism of all-sided knowledge of public 
affairs. 

For twenty years the author has felt that what conditions 
afford is less truly "the scholar's opportunity"^ than an oppor- 
tunity for the scholar's interpreter. What others think of the 
practicability of his plan for carrying the knowledge of special- 
ists to average people is indicated in authoritative reviews (see 
last pages of this volume) of his book of last year on trusts. 

As each side in the labor controversy has now enough parti- 
sans or advocates, emphasizing points of strength and minimiz- 
ing points of weakness, brother trade unionists and fellow 
employers will understand that since the author here represents 
the great third party, the public, he would be unworthy of his 
task, and would have a bad opinion of his comrades, if for fear 
of any kind of punishmxcnt from them he hesitated to give the 
truth as his best endeavor finds it, without regard to which side 
it antagonizes. He has faith enough in each side's honesty to 
believe that each desires to gain, not by covering opposing truth 
but really by having all the truth in the case knowni ; and he has 
faith enough in the people's intelligence to believe that no 
covering of truth can long be successful. 

The authorities cited, it will be noticed, are chiefly of the 
latest and most reliable. Usually the facts of the matter, not 
the opinions given, may be found in the book or paper cited. 
This is especially the case with the government reports, in 
which, as a rule, few conclusions are drawn. 

To those critics to whom the style in some places, such as 
Chapter XXVL, may appear too polemic — may seem to be the 
style of an attack rather than that of an inquiry — it is to be said 
tha; in the author's opinion more considerate treatment of the 
views controverted is not deserved, and would have involved to 
some extent that common sacrifice of truth for expediency 

^Title of an inspiring address {Political Science Quarterly, 1897, page 
589) by Prof. J. B. Clark to Amherst students, in which he draws aside 
the curtain from the illimitable well-being that societ\^ can largely realize 
soon, if it only learns better to comprehend and utilize economic forces 
having a promise not yet conceived by the mind of man. 



Preface. 

which makes false doctrines so persistent. For making a few 
sentences, in diffeient parts of the book, faulty in length and 
balance by crowding in parenthetical phrases, the reason was 
that needed information not otherwise available was thus to be 
included for which an interested person would gladly incur the 
slight additional effort in reading. The same reason is to be 
given for the unusual length and number of the foot notes. 

Since the first chapters left the hands of the author the Irish 
land bill (p. 31) has become a law, and is being extensively 
utilized in the purchase of land by tenants. The labor upris- 
ings in Russia (pp. 171, 398) have continued, a half million 
workers being on strike in August, and reforms there will prob- 
ably come faster hereafter. To the discussion of a few topics, 
especially blacklisting and boycotting, additions are made here 
and there to the end of the book that were necessitated by later 
events. All that the book contains concerning a topic is re- 
ferred to in the index. 

George Lewis Bolen. 

Jackson, Michigan, October 15, 1903. 



CHAPTER I. 

RENT AND LAND OWNERSHIP. 

The Four Shares in the Distribution of Wealth. By the 

relative demand for and supply of the four factors of produc- 
tion — land, labor, capital, and employer's ability for managing 
and for bearing risks — the distribution or division of the wealth 
they are united to produce is mainly determined, demand and 
supply here, as elsewhere, fixing prices in share of wealth re- 
ceived. From the money for which the product is sold, or from 
the product itself, as when in former times shares were taken 
in wheat, the owner of land (including with land its climate, 
water, minerals, and its native plants and animals) receives 
rent as his share ; the owner of capital (the tools and materials) 
receives interest; the hired workman receives wages; and the 
man carrying on the business, the captain of industry, receives 
profits, or bears the loss when no profit is realized. A farmer 
who tills his own land, without hired help, receives all four 
shares. A house painter who does all his work, with his own 
paints and his own outfit of ladders and brushes, receives all 
the shares except the rent he pays for his paint shop. Railway 
and manufacturing companies, if out of debt, own their land 
and capital, and receive all the shares except the wages and 
salaries paid to their many employees. Any business, to be 
successful, must pay all expenses, yield an allowance for depre- 
ciation of property, and yield every one of these four shares, to 
the measure that is usual for the particular business in its com- 
munity. Besides the rent a farmer's land would bring if tilled 
by others, and the interest others would pay on the capital spent 
in barns, tools, seed, and fertilizers, his total income, to make 
his farming a success, must include as much in wages as he 
could earn by working for a neighbor, and enough profit also to 
pay for his care and risk of capital in the uncertainties of farm- 

I • (I) 



2 Getting a Living. 

ing. By reason of poor seasons, bad management, or low 
prices, it often happens that in farming not all of this is 
accomplished. The same may be said of other occupations. 

Degree of Desirability Fixes Rent. Rent is a payment made 
to the owner for the use of land that is more desirable than 
other land that could be used without payment of rent. The 
amount of rent depends upon the degree of desirability. If a 
piece of land is but little to be preferred above no-rent land, it 
will bring low rent; if greatly to be preferred, it will bring 
high rent. In a large and not fully settled country like the 
United States there is no-rent land at many places. One home- 
stead of 1 60 acres of government land, in many frontier dis- 
tricts, can yet be taken up free, and full ownership acquired 
through five years' settlement and cultivation, by any man who 
is a citizen or intends to become one, and also by unmarried 
women or widows. A person in densely peopled England, to 
get the use of no-rent land, must go to other countries, though 
he may be allowed free use at home of a piece of worthless 
marsh or mountain barren; and small bodies of practically 
Avorthless land are included rent-free everywhere in connection 
with the better land to which they are united in a farm. 

Rent for Fertility and Location; Interest for Capital in 
Buildings. Rather than go to distant no-rent lands, a man pays 
rent. To get just the land he prefers, he may pay a high rent, 
as for a corner store on Broadway. In this case he pays for 
favorable location only. With farming land near a city the 
rent is partly for location and partly for fertility. The portion 
allowed for the house on the farm is not pure economic rent, 
but interest on the capital v/ith which the house was built. 
The same is true of the portion allowed for fertility made by 
spending capital in clearing, draining, and fertilizing. Money 
paid for use of an office on the twenty-fifth floor of the Park 
Row Building in New York is partly rent, considering the cen- 
tral location, but perhaps is chiefly interest on capital spent 
upon the building. Where a vStreet car company pays its stock- 
holders dividends on a capital stock of $15,000,000, with a plant 
and equipment that cost only $7,500,000, half of the dividend 
is on the value of its franchise, and is rent for the land in the 
streets, the sole right to which has been obtained from the city. 



Rent and Land Ozvnership. 3 

The other half of the dividend is interest on capital spent for 
tracks, etc. (not counting value of business and profit for risk). 

Rent Does Not Increase the Price, in many cases at least, 
of the product grown on the land rented. The price of wheat 
is fixed by the cost of producing that portion of the demanded 
supply which is grown under most unfavorable circumstances. 
This part is grown far away in the West, where one can get 
fertile land free, but must take a local price lessened by the cost 
of freight to market ; or in nearer farms it is grown on spots 
of land so poor that no one would guarantee rent for it, yielding 
to the owner or occupier barely enough to pay for the seed and 
labor. As the demand for wheat holds prices high enough to 
keep this labor engaged on such land raising wheat rather than 
in other industry, the farmer on good land obtains from his 
larger yield sufficient income to pay rent, over and above the 
three other shares. Knowledge among farmers generally of 
the extra desirableness of the better land, and their freedom 
to bid for it, causes rates of rent and of purchase price to bal- 
ance desirableness with great exactness. 

One Price for All the Supply. One bushel of wheat sells 
for no more than any other bushel of the same grade in the 
same market, though at about equal cost one bushel may have 
been grown on an acre yielding only five bushels, and another 
on an acre yielding fifty bushels. If a tenant, allowed by a 
kind-hearted landlord to farm good land free of rent, sold his 
wdieat for less than the highest price he could get, the differ- 
ence in price would simply be a gift from the tenant to the 
buyer, as the amount of the rent was a gift from the landlord. 
A quoted saying of a noted political economist was that entire 
abolition of farm rent in England would not add a pinch of 
flour to the poor man's two-penny loaf. Prices of farm prod- 
uce there would be the same after abolition of rent as before. 
Tenants, while allowed free occupancy, would be the same as 
owners, who strive just as eagerly as tenants to get the highest 
price. It is the prices that fix the rent, not the rent that fixes 
the prices. English rents and land values have fallen greatly 
since the lowering of English prices by importation of cheap 
grain fromi America and Argentina.^ 

^The Economic Law of Value and Price. If much of any commodity is 



4 Getting a Living. 

Store Rents and Prices of Goods. Would not goods be 
cheaper In cities if store rents were not so high ? A restaurant 
keeper will say he cannot pay his rent and help and furnish his 
grade of meals for less than twenty-five cents. Rent will be the 
first expense he mentions. A large part of a merchant's profit 
over cost of goods must usually go for rent. With no rent 
would he not give that part of the profit, or some of it, to the 
buyer in order to get his trade ? Undoubtedly he would ; but 
with no rent there would be no buildings. Capital is invested 
in store buildings because they bring rent — rent for the ground 
and interest on the cost of building. A merchant erecting a 
■building for his own business wants rent for it no less than if 
he leased it to a tenant. For the lot left vacant, rent would 
arise as soon as more than one person wanted the location. A 
fruit vender allowed at first by the land owner to use the side- 
walk free of charge might be forced to pay rent by other vend- 
ers offering a price for it. If the owner refused the highest 
offer, he would simply give that sum to the first vender. The 

offered, in proportion to the demand, price falls ; if little, price rises. In the 
former case, to dispose of all the supply offered, price must be lowered to 
reach persons who lack means or who do not care much to buy. In the 
latter case there are enough buyers who are willing to pay well. A dealer 
puts price as high as people will pay and continue buying. The one price 
for all the supply offered is fixed by the buyer's estimate of the utility to him. 
of the least desired portion the price will carry off in sales. For the most 
necessary portions he uses he would pay great prices, if supply were so 
reduced, as in time of famine. Value and price of present supply depend 
on this marginal utility, and by unforeseen increase of supply or shrinkage 
of demand may fall below cost of production; but output will then be 
decreased, so that price of future supply will cover cost, with grower's or 
manufacturer's profit, of that portion of the supply placed in market at 
greatest expense. To this cost and necessary profit, price tends to conform. 
If it rises above, new producers enter the business or old ones enlarge 
capacity, thus increasing supply; if it falls below, some of the marginal 
producers drop out. Farmers do not drop out promptly when price thus 
falls. They have choice of few crops, are slow to change, cannot easily 
determine what profit they are earning, bear their loss in lessened income 
from their own work and capital (not in money spent without return), and 
often hope that price will rise by next season. But when profit becomes high,, 
acreage cultivated is increased at once. A factory cannot be diverted, with- 
out great loss, from the business for which it was built, but when demand 
fails it can be run on short time. 



Rent and Land Ownership. 5 

other venders would prefer paying rent for the good location to 
using no-rent sidewalks on which fewer people passed. The 
share of rent necessarily added to each dollar of sales is usually 
a larger sum with low rent than with high. As a rule, well 
established stores paying highest rent sell most goods and have 
lowest average of prices. No experienced buyer would expect 
to get goods so cheap in a cross-roads store renting at $100 a 
year as in a great city establishment renting at $100,000. It is 
the business afforded by the location that fixes the rent — the 
crowd to be reached, and the opportunity to make many sales 
at a profit ; as farm rent is fixed by the land's fertility and the 
net prices to be obtained in its market. 

Where Rent Raises Prices. In the case of business stands, 
a share of rent is added to prices because the service of store- 
keeping for a city cannot be performed outside of it from no- 
rent land, and because the small area suitable for stores is occu- 
pied for other purposes yielding rent. Hence, to make a living 
profit the merchant in the worst location, however eager his 
desire for more trade, must raise his prices sufficiently to pay 
the rent his land would bring for residence or other purposes. 
Merchants in better locations can sell no higher, but the large 
concerns may sell a little lower, their high rent being lower 
than his per dollar of sales. In the same way the worst land 
used for market gardening, below^ cost of production on which 
price cannot fall to remain, yields at least the rent it would 
bring for other purposes ; and the prices paid the market gar- 
dener, to keep him in business and secure the demanded supply, 
must aggregate in the year the amount of his rent above what 
would otherwise be necessary. The prices of vegetables in a 
town located in a small area of good land would be raised by 
a change among many farmers from vegetables to a more profit- 
able crop of tobacco. Yet here the rent of tobacco land would 
not raise the price of tobacco if it were grown more expensively 
elsewhere, but would raise the prices of the vegetable crops 
displaced, and not to be supplied except by costly shipment. As 
the price of nearly every article is made up of a long chain of 
costs, from the raw material producer to the consumer, rent at 
some point enters into the cost of most things,^ and to an im- 

^J. A. Hobson, "Economics of Distribution." 



6 Getting a Living. 

portant extent in cities and in crowded countries like Eng- 
land. There the demand for land and its scarcity, raising 
rent and lowering wages by forcing occupancy to poor soil 
and poor locations, may give rise to rent on the very worst land 
in use. Even in the entire world there might conceivably be 
no habitable free-rent land if population became sufficiently 
crowded. 

There Can be No Escape from Rent where more than one 
person wants the land, nor from value attaching to land, nor 
from land ownership. The fact that land is a free gift from 
nature makes no difference. Price of a commodity already in 
market need have little relation to its cost. Gold picked up on 
the surface is worth as much as gold hoisted from the depths. 
Value of land, as of all else, depends upon limit of supply. 
The supply of land seemed unlimited in America, but as popu- 
lation spread westward all land of any fertility and accessibility 
took value, into which its utility to man ripened as soon as he 
had a desire for it and could take possession. With everything 
of value use by one excludes another, and there is always an 
owner. When land was not owned individually it was owned 
collectively, by the occupying tribe. Under civilization every 
kind of transferable usefulness or service has a value in money. 
Land's yearly usefulness fixes its rent and its value. The value 
is approximately such a sum as at prevailing interest will yield 
the rent, being also affected, as are values in general, by con- 
siderations as to probable future changes. 

The Unearned Increment is a term applied to that increase 
of land values that arises, not from improvements or any acts 
of the owner, but from growth of population and progress of 
society. Hence, by the owner the increment seems 'to be un- 
earned. In the case of the choice business lot that was sold in 
Chicago in May, 1901, for $1,000,000, which doubtless could 
have been bought in 1840 for $100, all of its high selling value 
now is often thought of as unearned increment except the $100 
we will assume it cost at first. Of course, on this principle the 
whole value of every piece of American land is unearned if 
measured from a time, not very far back, when land here had 
no money vakie at all. Large increase of land value arises 
chiefly in cities, but farm land also, wherever there is growth 



Rent and Land Ozvnership. 7 

of population and of wealth, tends to rise in value at about the 
same rate as that growth. 

Henry George's Proposal. As the unearned increment is 
caused by the advance of society, Henry George and his follow- 
ers have urged that the whole people collectively, instead of the 
few land owners individually, should receive the benefit. This 
result would be attained under the earlier socialistic plan of 
state ownership and management of all land, all capital, and all 
business, and by Mr. George's recent plan for taking all land 
rent in taxation. His well known book, ''Progress and Pov- 
erty," published in 1879, ^^^ circulating to the extent of more 
copies than any other book on economics ever written, was 
eagerly read by many persons with a hope that the chief cause 
of poverty, and a practicable cure, had at last been found. 
Reasoning that progress in the growth of society increases de- 
mand for land and raises rent, giving more and more of the 
annual product to land owners and causing poverty to other 
classes by leaving less of the product for them, he argued that 
society should support the government by taking in taxes all 
the economic rent of land (not of its improvements), and thus 
remove the burden of all other taxation. He was socialistic in 
advocating government ownership or nationalization of land 
only, desiring to leave as at present private ownership of cap- 
ital and of industry. Also, he was socialistic in his grossly 
extravagant and untrue belief of the extent and increase of 
human misery under present conditions, and of the benefits to 
be secured by adoption of his plan. 

That Poverty Might Indeed be Abolished effectually 
seemed ve'ry plausible in the change proposed. Entire release 
from taxation of all values produced by labor and capital — 
land fertility, buildings, machines, goods of every kind — would 
stimulate industry prodigiously. Land improvement and rail- 
road building would place the country's resources in the best 
possible condition for the use of man. On the one hand, cost of 
living would fall, not only from increase of commodities, but 
also from removal of tariff and other taxes that now form with 
most things a large part of the retail price. On the other hand, 
an unprecedented growth of business would provide employ- 



8 Getting a Living. 

ment for all who wanted it, and at wages rapidly rising. In- 
crease of capital and fall of interest would so multiply untaxed 
dwellings that every worker who made a worthy effort could 
have a good home, and the public's ample income from land 
rents would provide all the schools, asylums, parks, and other 
services required for the highest possible well-being of society. 
Instead of the worker having dependently to seek an employer, 
the employer would have to meet the terms of an independent 
worker, since the impossibility of holding land out of its best 
use, to reap a rise in its value, would so increase the available 
supply of land, and lower its rent, that with his ample savings 
each worker could engage in production for himself. This 
dazzling portrayal of human welfare Mr. George brought out, 
in a style of writing rarely equalled for attractiveness, with an 
exaggerated contrast of conditions under the present system 
of private ownership of land ; claiming that despite all the in- 
ventions demand for raw materials causes the rise of rent to do 
more than keep pace with progress, soon curtailing the plentiful 
living of workers on the cheap land of the frontier, and bring- 
ing wages everywhere, under an inevitable iron law of rent, 
down to the level of bare subsistence. If his portrayal were 
true, of the suffering and doom calling for reform, and of the 
elysium to be brought to earth by his remedy proposed, no one 
perceiving the truth could rightly hesitate to join his move- 
ment.^ 

But the Plan Proposed Was Fatally Defective, as was 
promptly pointed out by economists. First, for a change of 
land tenure there is no such need as Mr. George claimed. To 
such dependence people could be reduced only on an island 
from which there was no escape, and on which the landlords 

^A wage worker, he said, would "no more worry about employment than 
air to breathe;" would have "no more care about physical necessities than 
the lilies of the field." This anticipation alone would be, to the average 
practical man, sufficient to stamp the proposal as chimerical. That men 
should desire opportunity to work — to endure the curse laid on Adam (a 
desire mentioned by Mr. George and by socialists as evidence of wrong con- 
ditions) — is no stranger than that a farmer should be glad to be over- 
whelmed with the labor of handling a large crop. Very light thinking 
shows that work is wanted because it is the only available means of ob- 
taining the goods It produces or earns. 



Rent and Land Ozvnership. g 

were a class of superior ability, acting together as a compact 
monopoly. Then there would be grave truth in the statement 
that the owners of the means of production own the other 
people, whether or not the latter are called slaves. But the case 
is very different where people have the knowledge and capa- 
bility to make use of their opportunities. Second, 

Progress Does Not Bring" Poverty, nor even in a crowded 
country does an increase of population with which progress at 
least keeps pace. By reason of invention of machinery and 
opening of new lands, wages in commodities consumed have 
practically doubled during the last half century in all the pro- 
gressive countries, despite an increase of population never be- 
fore equalled. Wages are generally highest in those cities 
where rents are highest, not simply because high rent raises the 
cost of living, but also because there it is that labor as well as 
land is worth most to the buyer. The growth of business and 
population that raises rents is desired by wage workers, for 
the sake of increasing employment and rising wages, as well as 
by the owners of land to be thus raised in value. The very 
high wages paid at the opening of a distant mining settlement 
are for but few workers, and by dangers and costs are often 
reduced to less in commodities enjoyed than the smaller money 
wages of older places. If the mining town grows large, 
its money wages may remain undiminished, after the dangers 
and costs have mainly disappeared. It was true in pioneer 
times that easy access to free land set the wages of farm hands 
at what their labor would secure in farming for themselves; 
but since then, in progressive frontier regions, the growth of 
business and of labor demand has raised wages far above that 
amount for all workers except the few that are well capable of 
independent farming. Poverty, or slowest improvement in con- 
dition, has come, not to those districts and cities where growth 
of industry has raised rents and land values most, but to those 
where these have risen least. It was in former times in Europe 
and Asia, when in getting a living there was little or no prog- 
ress, that growth of population, by raising rents, increased 
poverty. Progress has not brought poverty to any except the 
few who have failed to keep up — to farmers who have not 
adapted their crops to changes in demand ; to workers displaced 



10 Getting a Living. 

by machinery who have surrendered without proper effort to 
find and deserve the work awaiting them in new industries; 
and to the pitiable poor who helplessly crowd into the slums of 
cities, where they want to live but where they are not wanted 
to work. And in these cases the loss to farmers and wage 
workers as producers has been greatly overbalanced by the 
gains of cheapened production for a much larger number as 
consumers, raising the average welfare of the people as a whole. 
That life came to us in the present period, instead of at any 
other time to be selected in the past, is felt by most persons to 
be one of their main reasons for thankfulness. The manifold 
advantages of civilization greatly outweigh the disadvantage of 
rising rent. 

Sometimes a Decrement of Value. Third, the progress of 
society in improved transportation in later years, especially 
since Mr. George wrote, by giving easy access to rich vacant 
land in distant regions, and thus reducing prices of products, 
has lowered rents and land values in older states and countries. 
If farming land in England had been bought thirty years ago 
by the government, as proposed then by Mr. Mill and the Land 
Tenure Reform Association, later progress and growth would 
have been accompanied, not by an unearned gain, but by a paid- 
for loss. Shrinkage of land values, from agricultural depres- 
sion, has been a prominent fact in all the American states except 
a few of the newer ones, in which such values had not yet risen 
far. In 1871, when Mr. George's ideas first took form, and 
when land tenure agitation was being carried on in England, 
there had been a long and steady increase of land values, broken 
only now and then by short periods of business depression. If 
fall of rent in the older regions is fully balanced by rise of rent 
in the new, and by the rent income collected in dividends on the 
monopoly value of new railroads, the change is at least a benefit 
to society. Land value and rent in some form are as inevitable 
as use of land for production, and it is mainly by reaching 
through cheap transportation the world's entire supply of 
land that rent and land scarcity are to be brought toward the 
minimum. Progress also lightens demand for land by develop- 
ing better methods of culture and better crops, and by turning 
to use the products and powers of nature that previously went 



Rent and Land Ownership. ii 

to waste. Minerals from greater depths, and of poorer quali- 
ties, are now utilized that were worthless under the methods 
of ten years ago ; electric power generated from water falls is 
now being extensively used instead of steam from diminishing 
stores of coal ; while Portland cement, stone, and iron will take 
the place of wood as it grows scarcer. For taking from the 
earth's limited resources the pressure of a growing population's 
needs, the possibilities of progress are of course incalculable. 

Could Not Give Freer Access to Land. Fourth, in the ne- 
cessity for land it seems that the right to it ought to be as free 
to every person as the right to air and water. But the differ- 
ence is that the land desired is limited in quantity, and hence is 
not free but bears a price, as is the case to some extent with 
water in cities, and also with the air and view on high ground 
soon appropriated for residences. Under state ownership, or 
Mr. George's single tax, it is unlikely that people's access to 
land would be, to a noticeable extent, more easy and free than 
at present. In America there is no driving of peasants from 
their fields and homes to make parks for hunting, as in Great 
Britain ; and the holding of land by owners from use is notice- 
ably harmful to the public in perhaps no cases except with 
monopolized mineral and timber areas that the ordinary man 
needing land could not use. If all land titles were annulled, 
and an equal share of land allotted to every person, whether he 
could use it or not, desirable pieces would bring rent as before 
if holders were not deprived of liberty and required to keep 
their allotments, whether satisfied or not. If the government 
charged rent proportioned to desirability,^ the present system 
would remain unchanged ; if it charged the same rent for all 

^This It would have to do, to avoid favoring those on good land, to the 
unjust disadvantage of others; also, this would be necessary, in the absence 
of socialistic production by the state, to put into the hands of those able to 
use land the shares of those in the many occupations in which no land Is 
required. With the rent collected the state could pay general governmental 
expenses, and thus serve all alike. Allotting land of varying quality in 
tracts of equal size, involves injustice, and the demoralizing chances of 
gambling. Heirs to a farm usually sell it, often to one of their own number, 
and divide the proceeds with exact equality. Dividing the land itself, the 
good Into smaller shares and the poor into larger, allowing also for the 
buildings — is almost certain to result in dissatisfaction. 



12 Getting a Living. 

land, a person receiving a poor allotment would pay rent to an- 
other for the right to occupy his better allotment. If owner- 
ship accompanied the allotment, and the right to buy and sell 
remained, land would in time be as unequally divided as at pres- 
ent, as would be the case with wealth in general, if equally 
divided in some Utopian scheme. Some people, by nature, can 
save nothing, while others can save everything ; some can pro- 
duce much, others little. So far as inequalities are thus caused, 
to complain of them is simply to complain of the Creator for 
having made mankind as it is. The general effect of the pres- 
ent system is to place land and capital in possession of those 
who can use them best in producing goods and services for so- 
ciety. The course to pursue is not to attack the system, and 
thus endanger civilization, but to rid it of wrongs, which will 
continue to need guarding against under any possible enlighten- 
ment. 

Would Any Public Benefit as an End Justify Robbery as 
the Means? Taking all the economic rent of land in taxation 
would practically be taking the land itself, since its value springs 
from its rent, or the worth of its use; though Mr. George 
would permit landlords to continue calling their own, and occu- 
pying, such portions of their present holdings as they were will- 
ing to pay rent upon to the state. Of course, if the state owned 
all the land it would get an enormous income in rent, with 
which, after abolishing all present taxation, it could do wonders 
for its citizens, in education and social betterment of every 
kind. But how could the state get possession of land now 
owned by private parties? To buy it would involve, for pur- 
chase price and for interest on bonds, taxation that would be 
better for direct income than would the rent. Mr. George ar- 
gued that land should simply be confiscated ; that as the chain 
of land ownership includes conquest or robbery at some time 
in the warring ages of the past, justice would not require pay- 
ment by the government to the owners dispossessed, who 
should bear all the loss like persons who buy stolen goods the 
owner recovers, and like purchasers of land with a title soon 
proved to be defective. 

But Could Land Robbery be Made Successful in This Age 
— setting aside the matter of right and wrong? Not among 



Rent and Land Ozvncrship. 13 

a people enlightened, or aggressive in character. In barbarous 
times the common practice by which a conquering tribe helped 
themselves freely to the lands of the vanquished, and reduced 
many of them to slavery, was expected and acquiesced in by 
the latter, who would have followed the same policy had they 
been the victors themselves. But civilized people of to-day, un- 
der their experience of freedom, would soon pine away and die 
if subjected to hopeless slavery like that of ancient times ; and as 
far back as several centuries ago, when the conquering English 
divided up the land of Ireland, men's ideas of justice had so 
developed that the sturdy Irish never became reconciled, and 
never will until by means of government loans on easy terms — a 
plan soon to be put into effect by the British Parliament — the 
tillers of the soil, the descendants of the robbed, have displaced 
as owners the absent landlords, the descendants of the robbers. 
And this was true though the Irish fared better than their 
neighbors, in being left longer undisturbed, though the disso- 
lute character of the Irish landlords, and the draining off of the 
rent to be spent in other countries, impoverished the Irish ten- 
ants, and made the results of their conquest by far the worst. 
The Welsh, subjected by the English several centuries earlier, 
accepted the situation, and united with their conquerors, as did 
the Saxon English a short time before when despoiled of their 
lands by the Norman French. In the present age it has been 
customary to force or cheat barbarous people out of their lands, 
as in the case of the American Indians ; but such a policy is not 
thought of by the British in their recent conquest of the Boer 
republic. On the contrary, the hardy Boers are conciliated 
with large appropriations of money to repair their losses in the 
war, that they may become prosperous and loyal citizens, in- 
stead of a turbulent body to give trouble for generations. Too 
obvious to be considered would be the political impossibility of 
enacting in America a law for confiscating the titles and rents 
of the numerous and powerful class of land owners, who here 
comprise, with their families, perhaps a majority of the people, 
and consist mainly of the purposeful and capable, including 
most men of all grades carrying on independent business, and 
a host of home owners among wage workers ; and too improb- 
able to discuss would be the expectation of such confiscation 



14 Getting a Living. 

being so acquiesced in by them as to admit of its being carried 
out by any government. 

That the Smaller Land Owners Would be Benefited by Mr. 

George's single tax is claimed by its advocates — in fact that all 
would be benefited who are interested in active business rather 
than in an idle receiving of rent. If this were true the proposal 
might be practicable, since idle receivers of rent are not 
numerous in America as in Europe. But the magic effect on 
production could not take place. Rent would exist as before, 
and the difference in ease of access to land would not be notice- 
able. Whatever the government obtained would still come out 
of its people's product, and imposing on land owners alone a tax 
not to be shifted would be so contrary to accepted ideas of jus- 
tice as to check industry far more than do the taxes of the pres- 
ent, however wasteful the latter may be in cost of collection, and 
however unjustly they may fall in higher prices on consumers. 
In nearly all cases the confiscation would rob innocent pur- 
chasers, who had paid full value for land, and had been in no 
way implicated in (nor had even gained from by inheritance) 
conquest or robbery in the remote past, or in land swindling 
schemes of later times. In many cases the landholder's pur- 
chase would be so recent that no unearned increment would 
have had time to accrue. The fact that perhaps all cases of 
civilization were anciently based in part on the spoils of tribal 
wars, does not affect the righteousness and public advantage of 
peaceable possession to the present generation. Indeed, con- 
quest in barbarous times was right — was even the people's duty 
— so far as they knew no better, and followed the instincts and 
experiences nature had given them. ^lore blamable now, 
under the light of the accumulated wisdom of the ages, would 
be a small departure from justice taken knowingly. Law prin- 
ciples well settled as just give rights in some cases to the inno- 
cent purchaser, for a valuable consideration, against previous 
owners defrauded, and limit the time within which an old 
claim may be enforced. Especially does continued possession 
strengthen a defective title to land. Society has learned that 
justice and well-being are better promoted by letting an old 
wrong go uncorrected than by permitting a new one against a 
present possessor not personally in fault, or whose fault is over- 



Rent and Land Ownership. 15 

balanced by the claimant's neglect in delay. If it were not for 
the sense of justice, that would prevent the sudden confiscation 
of land values, men would not have sufficient confidence in social 
order to accumulate capital and maintain civilized industry. 

How the Increment is Earned. The increment of land 
value, on the average, is well earned, and falls to the owner 
rightfully. A man invests in land, and in its improvement 
(even when the main object is to use it himself or to get the 
rent income), with the hope that at least its value will not fall, 
and usually with some hope of a rise. A part of the rent or 
crops obtained is interest on the money capital invested in build- 
ings and fences ; the remainder serves as interest on the money 
capital invested in the land itself. Thus the annual rent income 
at first is obviously just, since capital exists for the sake of 
income, and since the owner could get such an income by using 
his capital in some other way. But what entitles him to the 
value's increase ? This increment of value, and of annual rent, 
he earns by bearing while it accrues the risk of loss. Why do 
men move so cautiously in buying land? If its ownership were 
so sure a source of gain as Mr. George assumed, there would 
be little need for caution. The fact is that all chances of rise 
or fall in value are considered in making the price. The incre- 
ment coming after a while to the buyer, all other possible bid- 
ders had a chance to get by offering more. They decided not to 
invest for it, because they thought the chances stronger for a 
loss, or for a gain too small. On the average, the losses from 
investment in real estate reduce its gains to the level of gains 
from other equally desirable investments. This must be so, at 
least in the opinion of investors, or more of them would turn 
their attention to real estate, and by raising its prices lower the 
rate per cent of annual return in rising value. In perhaps every 
kind of investment there is some chance of unearned gain,^ 
^All Values are Socially Created of course, arising from the presence 
of a society of people by whom the article is wanted, and all values are 
continually changing with changes of supply and demand. Land differs 
from most other valuable things in being generally less capable of increase, 
and in its remaining in existence if taken care of, though its importance in 
these respects is shared by an established business, which is increased in 
value by grow^th of population, and which cannot easily be duplicated. 
The chief cases of unearned increment of value in a business are monopo- 
lies connected with land, such as railways and mines. But in view of the 



1 6 Getting a Living. 

balanced by a chance of unavoidable loss. The current market 
prices of corporation shares, wheat, cotton, and other things 
largely dealt in besides land, show what buyers think about 
these chances at the time. The whole system of ownership is 
thus made just. If one kind of property promises special gains 
for the future, its price rises, and sellers now get the present 
value of what is later to be realized. In estimating values the 
only judgment worth considering is that which is backed with 
an offer of money.^ 

The Service of Owning Things. Moreover, a man renders 
a valuable service to society simply by owning vacant land that 

state's right to tax and to take land, and of the better use of land brought 
about by its private ownership, there was no force in Mr. George's con- 
tention that it is right to allow the owner the future increase in value 
of labor products, such as a stock of wheat, because he is thus induced 
to provide a supply for society's future needs, but that it is wrong to 
allow him the increment in value of land. For land that is wanted there 
must be an owner, and where its private ownership is permitted its present 
prices cover as justly as with wheat the probability of future increment. 
How far an article's value arises from scarcity due to the necessity for labor 
in making it, and how far from scarcity due to limits in nature's materials, 
is of little consequence. With most things, including improved land, value 
arises from both these sources. The socialist claim, that only that value Is 
just which is due to the former source, is abandoned by Mr. George in 
favoring private ownership of increment with wheat. 

^Other Ways of Earning the Increment. Where increment of value 
is largest and most rapid, as in Western cities, the owners earn it, to an 
important extent, by their enterprise in building up industry and trade, by 
which population is attracted. There is much sound achievement in this 
line, aside from offering bonuses as bribes for removal of factories from 
other towns. In most places the leading real estate owners partly earn the 
increment by risking capital in buildings, by opening streets, and by gen- 
erally promoting the city's growth. Under Mr. George's single tax there 
would be little or no effort to grade lots or build up the city, unless under- 
taken by the state. Increment would be taxed away, but loss the individual 
would have to bear himself. This, it was said by F. A. Walker, would be 
playing by the state on the principle of "heads I win, tails you lose." Fur- 
thermore, the earliest settlers, who gain most of the increment, are the 
persons who by taking largest risks and dangers have done most toward 
creating it. It is right that the man coming last should pay for value 
already existing toward which he has contributed nothing. To gain much 
of an increment the owner doing least to build up the city, who contributes 
simply his presence, must have come early and borne long the risks and 
burden. Increase of value is largely paid for in assessments for paving, etc. 



Rent and Land Ownership. 17 

may be needed later. The attempt of single tax speakers to 
make light of the "holding" of immovable land is superficial. 
It is a burden that must fall on somebody. To own and hold 
for the future anything not in use is to do without the income 
the capital in it would bring otherwise, or without the present 
satisfaction to be obtained by spending in personal consumption 
the money it would sell for. If there are to be any vacant lots 
in a city, some persons must own them, since simply the prob- 
able future need for them would give them value. The health- 
fulness secured by spreading out a city, the division among 
more owners of the increment of land values, and especially the 
lowering of rents at the center by expanding the business 
area, — vastly overbalance with benefit the slight evil effect that 
holding of lots vacant has toward making farm land scarcer.^ 
What else but the increment of value is to reward owners of 
vacant lots for their postponement of income or enjoyment, as 
well as for their payment of taxes, and for their risk that the 
value they hold may not be increased but diminished ? A note 
for $100 payable without interest a year hence, however well 
secured, would be w^orth now not over $95 or $96. Present 
goods are worth more than future goods, since the usefulness of 
capital is partly measured by time, like the hiring value of a 
horse. If private owners did not exchange their capital for 
vacant lots, and hold them until needed, society or the govern- 
ment would have to hold them at public expense, and at public 
risk of decline in value. The expense would include loss of the 
taxes an owner would pay, and loss of interest on the value of 
the lots.- Though the government had owned them from the 

^Also with land outside of cities It is best that the settlements be scattered 
as at present, and a wide area thus made accessible. In this way labor and 
capital are applied where they bring largest returns, and the increment 
of value is diffused among many communities. If the total of all incre- 
ment and rent are thus made larger than they would be if settlement were 
more compact, the use and enjoyment of land are made larger too. 

=^Losses from Land Owning. To keep up with interest at only five per 
cent, selling value of vacant land must double in twentv^ years. In but few 
American cities, except perhaps in the central business blocks, would vacant 
land have sold for as much in 1900 as in 1890. At many places, since the 
rapid growth between 1870 and 1890, men have paid taxes a dozen years at 
a time, without a cent of yearly income in rent, on outlying lots which cost 
2 



1 8 Getting a Livmg. 

beginning, its non-acceptance at any time of the money they 
would sell for would be the same as then investing that amount. 
This service of owning things necessary to society, such as 
surplus supplies of wheat and cotton, and permanent railroads 
and factories, is the basis of legitimate speculation. The im- 
portance of the service is clear in the case of a man of small 
capital absorbed in business, who finds it cheaper to rent a home 
than to pay taxes and insurance, keep up repairs, bear deprecia- 
tion from decay, do without the interest the money invested in 
the house would bring, bear the risk of a decline in its portion 
of the city, and be unable to sell quickly in case of need for the 
money. Besides taxes and ordinary repairs, a considerable part 
of the rent of a dwelling in the prosperous American cities and 
towns is required to balance depreciation from the erection of 
houses of newer style. Many a sound house, frame or brick, 
which thirty or forty years ago was a triumph in building, is 
now fit for little but to be torn down, or moved out into a cheap 
quarter. Such depreciation is one of the costs of progress, and 
does not appear in stagnant countries. In owning costly things 
that do not depreciate, such as diamonds and paintings, there is 
at least the burden of doing without the capital invested in them 
and its interest.^ 

them $i,ooo or more, but would not now sell for as much — not mentioning 
many thousands of cases in which land bought at prices boomed fictitiously 
high dropped soon in value until but a fraction remained. The best vacant 
lot for a residence in Jackson, Mich., a growing and solidly prosperous city, 
has been held at $3,500 for ten years. Here, aside from taxes, the annual 
loss from interest is about $175. Adjoining Jackson a tract of scrubby 
timber land, yielding no income except a little for pasture, was sold in 1902, 
on which one family had paid taxes for over sixty years, to a total a num- 
ber of times greater than the final selling price. In those few rare spots, 
surh as New York city, where land values increase steadily during good 
times and bad, it is bold expectation of future growth that raises them so 
high. The increment is thus well paid for in advance. In England, and in 
the American states east of the Mississippi, a matter of serious complaint 
with owners of farming land, during the last twenty years, has been lack 
of increment, with generally a positive decline in land values, caused by 
cheapened production of farm crops in the newly opened Northwest. 

'The Poor and Ignorant Easily Imposed Upon in Rent. It is among an 
intelligent and capable people that the owner's rent is well earned. Such 
people take advantage of competition among landlords, and seek out the 



Rent and Land Ozvncrship. 19 

The Landlord is Not a Parasite, therefore — he does not, as 
sociaHsts and single taxers assert, take under the law of private 
ownership a large share of the product of the laborer and of the 
employer without rendering any return to them or to society. 
In the ways explained above he fully earns all he receives in 
rent where taxation is just, and where the people he deals with 
know how to take care of themselves. But it is true that these 
conditions have rarely prevailed. In most countries, ever since 
the beginning of history, as explained in the preceding note, the 
common people's ignorance and dependence have generally kept 
them under a parasitic burden of landlordism.^ And if they 

lowest rents in reach. Economic laws, to work satisfactorily, require people 
who know how to take care of themselves. This is necessary to the just 
working of competition in any kind of buying and selling. Landlords in 
Ireland sixty years ago charged more rent than a fair interest on a fair 
value for the land, which tenants had to pay, up to the point of having left 
but a bare living, because ignorance, poverty, and over-population kept 
them from finding cheaper rent. The way of escape they finally learned 
was emigration to other countries less crowded. Too much rent is now 
paid by helpless people in the slums of large cities. Law and philanthropy 
are purifying the slums, because the people there are too ignorant and poor 
to get out of them. On the contrary, among people of a higher grade, 
especially city merchants, the landlord himself must provide a building of 
the kind desired, and keep it in good condition, or it will lie vacant, or its 
rent will fall. In the case of dwellings in small American cities, it is very 
often the landlord that deserves the sympathy, not the exacting tenant. 
Many of the owners of dwellings rented are far from being rich. Custom 
and public opinion often require a landlord to be content with lower rent 
than he might obtain from poor and ignorant people. This is especially 
true in Continental Europe, where until comparatively recent times not only 
custom, but in some cases law, had much to do with fixing rents, wages, and 
other prices. Under the law of 1881 in Ireland, to save tenants from ex- 
ploitation by the agents of absent landlords, courts lowered by an average 
of 21 per cent the rents of 335,000 tenants, and later, for 70,000 of these, 
lowered the rents an average of 22 per cent more. 

^The Worst Case of Parasitism was Italy under the Roman Empire. 
By reason of the continual inflow of slaves taken captive in conquered 
lands, the common people remaining free at home became superfluous, 
until finally the despotic imperial government, to keep them quiet, fed 
many of them with free bread and amused them with free games, con- 
ducting itself most of the industries, but not under the equality for all 
hoped for by the socialists. Thus came about the result recorded by Pliny 
in the sentence, "Large estates ruined Italy." The wealthy, being de- 
bauched by luxury and corruption, and the poor by idleness and uselessness, 



20 Gettino- a Living. 



^5' 



themselves had been the owners of the land they tilled, some 
other parasitic burden would have been settled upon them, as 
land-owning peasants in the Republic of France, and in the Em- 
pire of Russia, are now overtaxed to support a horde of offi- 
cials and soldiers, and as the American people, despite their un- 
equalled intelligence, are now exploited by monopolies in trusts 
and railroads. Men of insight would rather take their chances 
of justice in renting of separate and competing landlords than 
of the bureaucracy of state land officials that would be necessary 
under Mr. George's system. It will always be true that they 
who would have freedom must themselves be continually able 
to maintain it. Even in a family of brothers and sisters, not 
lacking in affection, some of them (often the strongest), 
who by nature neglect all the work they can, and claim the most 
when something is to be divided, — thus exploit the others (often 
the weakest), who by nature try to be as helpful as possible, 
and in a division choose the worst for the sake of the former's 
benefit. The self-reliance and intelligence developed in the ex- 
perience of the American people, together with the wide area 
and rich resources of this country, have secured for them, with 
many other benefits unknown elsewhere, all the advantages of 
private ownership of land, and have saved them from most of 
its evils. 

The Element of Soundness in the Single Tax Agitation of 
Mr. George, which is still kept up by a few persons in the United 
States, is that land, apart from its improvements, should be 
taxed on an assessment placed at or about its full selling value, 
the assessment increasing as value increases. This is ap- 
proached in the i\ustralian practice of assessing vacant lots for 
taxes as near real value as lots built upon. The general prac- 
tice in American cities has been to assess vacant lots very low, 
much farther below real value than lots containing houses. This 
difference of assessment is condemned by economists, for the 
reason that it encourages an owner to hold vacant land needed 
by society out of the market, in order to profit from a rise of 
value brought about by more progressive action on the part of 

Italy was easily over-run by the untainted barbarians of the north. Since 
then in Europe decay under parasitism has always been stopped in some 
way before proceeding very far. 



Rent and Land Ozvnership. 21 

others ; and discourages service of society by erecting new 
buildings, which at once causes a rise of assessment more than 
proportional to the building's cost.^ The motive for assessing 
outlying city lots low was doubtless good, due perhaps to the 
fact that no yearly income was derived from them, that during 
long periods there was no increase of their value, and that few 
of their owners held them unduly out of market. But placing 
too low an assessment on vast tracts of unused mineral and 
timber land has long been decidedly harmful to society, enabling 
men to partially monopolize scarce materials, and exact unjust 
prices for them, by keeping competitors away from the few 
sources of supply. If such land were assessed at full value, the 
taxes would be so high that it would not pay to buy it up for 
holding out of market with excessive price, or to delay its 
development. 

Reform of Taxation is now being pressed zealously and 
somewhat successfully in a number of the states, with especial 
effort to raise up toward full value the assessment of railway, 
street car, and mining property, with all of which, being natural 
monopolies, the unearned increment tends to become exception- 
ally large. Assessment of real estate in New York city was 
lately raised to full value, having previously been about a third 
less. In Massachusetts, full value assessment has been com- 
mon. Farming land, it is believed, has generally been assessed 
too high, since its decline of value after 1880. To raise the 
assessment of mineral and timber land, of vacant lots in cities, 
and to a less extent perhaps of occupied city land also, seems in 
America therefore to be the chief feature for the present in land 
reform, made so prominent for a while by J\Ir. George. To do 
all of this is now the effort in some states.^ To avoid injustice 

^Hadley, "Economics," 132. 

^Exemption of Land Improvements from Taxation Is another change 
urged by Mr. George that is growing in favor. The Australian practice of 
permitting counties and towns to exempt buildings and improvements, tax- 
ing the site value of the land alone, has lately been considered in Colorado 
and Massachusetts, with prospects of adoption. In Manitoba all improve- 
ments on farming land are exempt. Queensland practically exempted im- 
provements by an act of 1901. This is the rule in many towns of New 
Zealand and British Columbia. Ontario's practice of permitting cities to 
exempt factory plants and machinery, in order to gain new industries, has 



22 Getting a Living. 

to owners, especially recent purchasers, whose expectation of 
low assessment raised the purchase price they paid, the raise of 

been followed in many cases, during the last twenty years, by American 
state legislatures. In Great Britain three hundred local rating bodies have 
petitioned Parliament for power to confine taxation to land values as they 
would stand if unimproved. This reform is part of the Liberal party's 
program, and is favored by many of the opposite party. To support it, 
most of the Scotch members of Parliament are pledged. ( The Independent, 
Sept. II, 1902.) Germany, in her new Chinese colony of Kiaochau, levies 
a single tax of six per cent on land values, with reassessment every three 
years, exempting buildings and all other property. 

Use of Land in Ways Contrary to Public Welfare has long been an 
abuse in Great Britain crying for state intervention. In Ireland and Scot- 
land, and in recent years, land-owning noblemen, to make parks for game, 
have evicted or removed tens of thousands of tenants from land that the 
latter and their ancestors had lived upon for generations. The Duke of 
Sutherland's estate in the Scottish highlands comprises i,20(f,ooo acres. 
Such action is encouraged by the British custom of taxing vacant land ac- 
cording to the income from it, not according to its selling value for its most 
profitable use — a custom which has also been the cause in part of the pass- 
ing of a large portion of British land from tillage to pasturage. Though 
under such taxation pasturage may yield most net profit to the owner, it 
yields a smaller product of wealth to the country, and gives support to fewer 
farmers and laborers. To these changes in use of land are partly due the 
crowding and poverty in British cities. In New South Wales and New 
Zealand taxation of land at its full selling value, without regard to its use 
or income, has forced owners to devote it to that use most beneficial to 
society. (Max Hirsch, "Democracy vs. Socialism," 430.) 

The Land for the Sheep Instead of the People. In these t^vo col- 
onies sheep and cattle raising on wide areas of the best land, monopolized 
by landlords, had forced farm settlers far out on to land less fertile and less 
accessible, thus lowering wages and profits in farming, and reducing the 
annual product from which the country's people must live. On the western 
frontier in America the stock raisers kept back farm settlers for a while by 
violence, and by fencing in great areas of public land without legal right; 
but by the large movement of farm settlers, and by the President's recent 
action against the trespassing cattle kings, free pasturage on public land 
will soon be a thing of the past, and many thousands of square miles will 
come under cultivation by occupying owners. In Great Britain a growing 
feeling is that the harmful privileges of landlords there must be curtailed 
by taxation. Most of the burden of taxation was removed from land in 
1692. The landlords had complete control of Parliament until the rise of 
the manufacturing and trading classes during the first half of the nineteenth 
century; while the common people had little influence until after their ad- 
mission to the right to vote — in 1867 and 1885. The people are impov- 



Rent and Land Ownership. 23 

assessment would need to be gradual, as it is proposed to make 
the imposition of the single tax. Taxes on land cannot be 
added to rent, as the supply of land is fixed, and cannot be de- 
creased like commodities in order to raise price. A tax on city 
land must therefore be borne wholly by the owner. But a tax 
on buildings, if it lowers too far the rate per cent of net rent on 
their cost, is shifted on to tenants by its effect to check building 
until the demand for houses raises rents sufficiently to balance 
the tax — to a level of net income on capital equal to that prevail- 
ing in other lines of investment. Neither can an extra tax on 
farm land be added to prices of its products. Demand for them 
would be unchanged, and the farmer would need to grow as 
many as before to get the same gross income. The burden of 
extra tax would fair mainly on those whose assessment had 
been increased, being lessened somew^hat by the effect of the 
extra tax to lessen their land's value. 

Taking the Future Increment of value of city land for the 
public (not the past increment), the German economist Wagner 
has been inclined to regard with favor.^ The property rights of 
land owners this would affect only so far as present selling value 
is based upon expectation of future increase. But simply taxa- 
tion on an equitable assessment seems to be in America the 
sufficient and only practicable means of guarding against injury 
to society from private ownership of the increment. By the 
shrewdest judgment of owners and buyers, and with what 
seems to be the greatest possible justice to present and future 
generations, the increment yet to come is calculated and added 
to present prices, and by taxation is or may be shared by the 
public now. The private owner's right to future increment is 
the strongest motive for his investment of capital in improving 
land, and for his efforts to promote the community's prosperity. 

eiished, and the state weakened, by their separation from the land, In whose 
cultivation they would support themselves and add to national wealth. 
Wherever landlords follow a policy injurious to the people as a whole, pub- 
lic welfare requires that private ownership be closely restricted by law. If 
peasants are living upon land so much better suited to grazing than to 
farming that their labor yields a poor return, justice requires that they be 
not forced away by heartless eviction, but educated and thus led away 
through their own interest to better occupation elsewhere. 
'Hadley, "Economics," 473. 



24 Getting a Living. 

The field in which the people must now secure to themselves 
future increment, by means of strict franchises and outright 
ownership, comprises street railway and lighting service, 
bridge and dock sites. Also, government ownership of forests 
and mines, not uncommon in Europe, will probably come in 
time in America. With them the increment will be large. 
For public ownership of other land privately used, there is evi- 
dently in this country no need, and no desire except from a very 
few impractical theorists. 

Government Ownership of Land, with leases to occupiers, 
or restrictions on its private ownership, are necessary in some 
circumstances, to prevent it from being monopolized, and the 
common people from being exploited. Under the laws of 
Moses, to save the ignorant and imprudent from being dis- 
possessed of their homes by the cunning, land could be sold for 
only fifty years, the title then returning to the previous owner 
or his heirs. It is now felt that the United States must retain 
ownership of much of the public land of the Philippine Islands, 
and be cautious in granting franchises there to corporations. 
This policy is being followed in the laws enacted for these 
islands by Congress. Oppression there hitherto seems to have 
arisen in part from monopoly of land. Experience in India 
and Java shows that if European and American speculators are 
permitted to own large tracts of land in the Philippines, the 
simple-minded natives will soon be tenants — almost serfs, bound 
to the soil by poverty and ignorance.^ The vicious land system 
of England, the concentration of its ownership in the vast es- 
tates of the few, grew out of its division among conquering 
nobles, in 1066 and later, and from a number of gradual changes 
by which - ownership fell to a few great landlords, collecting 
rents from occupying tenants. Traces of the original collective 
ownership by all the people of a tribe continued down until 

'Prof. J. W. Jenks, in McClure's Magazine, Nov. 1902, says the Filipinos 
should be allowed to sell land only on permission of the local authorities; 
that the state should give, on liberal terms, a lease to continue as long as 
the rent was paid and the land cultivated, rent rates to be revised at 
regular intervals. From the villagers of Java, who are children com- 
pared with the shrewd Chinese traders, the latter are kept away by Dutch 
law, to prevent ruinous cheating. 



Rent and Land Ownership. 25 

recent times. From 1709 to 1837 the British ParHament, com- 
posed of landlords, passed 3954 enclosure acts, granting the 
claims of landlords for 4,207,883 acres of commons, to which 
the people previously had had access for pasture and wood. 
In France, on the contrary, when the nobles were driven out of 
the country in the revolution of 1789, the land fell chiefly in 
small tracts to the occupying peasants. In Continental Europe 
generally, many peasants now own their little farms, though 
in most of the countries there are also many large estates. In 
New Zealand the fertile land was being monopolized so fast 
in large estates, as in many countries in different ages, that 
within the last ten years the government has been breaking up 
the estates, by taxing them at a higher rate than small hold- 
ings, and by purchasing them to sell in small tracts to working 
farmers. 

Permanent Occupancy of Land is Necessary for Good 
Farming — to induce occupiers to plant orchards, to make drains 
and fences, and to enrich land by putting into it more fertility, 
by applying manure and farming carefully, than is taken out in 
crops. The prolonged labor and expense involved in such im- 
provements a farmer cannot afford to incur unless he has a 
number of years in which to reap returns. Even though his 
lease were long, say thirty years, the tendency would be for him 
to take out of the land in later years the fertility he had put in 
during the earlier. In America a rented farm has usually 
meant an abused farm. Nothing short of permanent owner- 
ship of land, with the accompanying monopoly, will secure best 
use of it, especially when such use requires much capital in 
improvements. In Ireland now there is said to be a marked 
difference in appearance in favor of farms that the occupiers 
own. As a wdiole, English farming under long leases, often 
passing from the farmer to his son, was more successful until 
recent years than Continental farming by peasant owners ; be- 
cause the latter, usually poor, tilled w^ith hand tools tracts too 
small, while the English tenant operated on a scale large enough 
to use capital with best results. But the uncertainties of renew- 
ing a lease, of allowing just compensation for the tenant's im- 
provements, and of holding him to proper care of the soil, 
render ownership by the occupying farmer decidedly preferable. 



2^ Getting a Living, 

both for him and for society, especially in view of the effect of 
ownership to develop industry, frugality, and general good citi- 
zenship. In late years spread of intelligence among the Conti- 
nental peasants has put their farming ahead of the English, 
notably in Holland and Denmark, whose people's success in 
adapting their farming to changed prices and conditions should 
be an incentive to farmers of other countries. 

Under Nature's Laws We Cannot Choose Our Land Ten- 
ure, but must have that system which our civilization requires, 
or otherwise incur penalty. In the hunting stage of savagery 
land could be held only by the tribe as a whole, which fought 
away other tribes from its game preserve. Next, in the farm- 
ing stage there came collective ownership by the village, with 
allotment of land, first to families and later to individuals — 
first for one or a few years, then for life, and then with hered- 
itary transmission to children. Next came full ownership by 
individuals as at present. In most of Europe there came, how- 
ever, before the present ownership, five or six centuries of the 
military feudal system, under which the barons held large areas 
of the king, paying him rent by serving with their men in war, 
while the latter, for the land they occupied, paid the baron rent 
by serving as his soldiers. Military service was changed in time 
to money taxes from the baron, and to money rent from his 
men, though by continued occupancy in England some of the 
latter as copyholders became owners to practically the same 
extent reached by the baron and others holding from the king 
as freeholders. Allotment from the village is best for those who 
now have that system, such as the simple peasants of India and 
Bulgaria, who would be cheated out of their means of living if 
they were allowed to sell their land rights without obtaining 
permission from the village elders. In some of the mountain 
communities in Switzerland land allotted for five to nine years 
is said to be cared for still, under ancient custom, as faithfully 
by the occupier as if it was to be held by him and his heirs for- 
ever. In Scotland, however, where higher intelligence leads to 
clearer perception of individual interests, the first third of the 
usual lease of nineteen years is ordinarily devoted to recuperat- 
ing land impoverished, but the last third to impoverishing it 
again, there being no certainty of a renewal of the lease, of 



Rent and Land Ownership 2y 

the rent rate after its expiration, or of a just allowance for the 
tenant's improvements.^ 

Bad Results of Limiting Ownership. Not only does this 
trouble appear in Great Britain under leases of any length, but 
the practice there of perpetuating family dignity by settling 
landed estates in life ownership on all the living generations 
(not desired in America nor permitted by law to the same 
extent), withholding from each generation the power to sell, — 
has some of the bad results of leases. It leads the possessor for 
life to exhaust the land by over-cropping, or to neglect its im- 
provements, especially when, all his children being daughters, 
the next heir is a distant relative, sometimes a person disliked. 
Also, the British law (with this custom of future settlement 
by will accordingly) giving all the landed estate to the oldest 
son, not only maintains aristocracy and tends to increase the 
large estates of the few, but it too leads the possessor to ex- 
haust the land when besides the oldest son he has many other 
children to provide for. But limiting ownership in the other 
direction has bad effects also. The French law requiring equal 
division of an estate among all the children, and prohibiting the 
father from making a will otherwise, has checked growth of 
population, injured established businesses by their division, and 
lowered capability and success by keeping sons waiting for petty 
inheritances, and thus placing the people on tracts too small and 
irregular for effective farming. Of these tracts 2,000,000 are 
under 12 acres, and 1,000,000 between 12 and 25 acres. 

Full Ownership is the Goal of Civilization, it seems, vir- 

^Article on Land, "Encyclopedia Britannica," 9th edition. 

Evil Effect of Temporary Leases. Under a temporary license, revoca- 
ble at will by the state of Maryland, oyster beds in Chesapeake Bay were 
rapidly exhausted, because, not knowing how long his right to a bed was to 
continue, a lessee had to consider the present, and not the long run. On 
the contrary, in Long Island Sound, where permanent possession of oyster 
beds was allowed, similar to ownership of land, oyster production increased, 
and became very profitable, but not at the state's loss. "The oyster growers 
of Long Island Sound have paid in taxes an amount far exceeding the total 
rental value of the oyster beds leased by Maryland for short terms." 
(Hadley, "Economics," 130.) In the case of Maryland the state kept its 
oyster beds and lost them. In the other case the state sold its beds and kept 
them. 



28 Getting a Living. 

tually unrestricted as in America. Under the land reforms in 
Ireland purchasing tenants become full owners, as Prussian 
tenants became when by the laws of 1821 and 1850 the common 
land of the villages was divided up individually, and the large 
estates compulsorily divided between the landlord and his ten- 
ants, the latter being enabled to pay the landlord, by means 
of state loans, whatever remained due to him above the money 
value of their rights to perpetual occupancy as tenants. In 
France the ownership was made similarly absolute, the price to 
the tenant being put very low, as the nobles were expelled and 
their land confiscated. In Russia full ownership by the peas- 
ants has appeared, but they are just now in the throes of tran- 
sition, being hardly ready for the change. They are in the 
power of money lenders, from whom they borrowed to pay for 
allotments from their lord's estate since the abolition in 1861 
of their feudal serfdom to him, and are also under the out- 
grown tyranny of the village, which still retains some of its 
ancient powers, and as members of which each male peasant 
received about 12 acres on the division of its common land. 
With the American Indians their pauperization and ruin under 
the free supply of government beef and blankets is now being 
gradually ended, by allotment to each of them of a farm, which, 
by being made inalienable/ is secured from the sharks who 

^Necessity for Easy Sale of Land. Why cannot the law be so changed 
that others besides Indians may be kept from selling and hence from 
losing their land? Because experience, whose teachings are first fol- 
lowed voluntarily in custom and then by law are made compulsory, has 
shown that under civilization those unable to buy and sell land with- 
out loss are unfit to make that good use of it which public welfare requires. 
By homestead exemption they are protected in case of debt without mort- 
gage, but in transmitting land under American law it is only the next 
holder whose ownership can be limited to a mere life right, without power 
to sell ; the next holder can be named, but from him the power to sell 
cannot be withheld. In England all successors living may be restricted 
to a life right, and the custom is for the next owner after them to repeat 
the process, in order to retain and increase family wealth and dignity. 
From absence of aristocracy and smallness of income from land rents, no 
such custom arose in America. Inability to sell is necessary with Indians, 
for only from land can they get a living. Ancient people were in the 
same condition, and hence the law, which (beyond the fighting power of 
one's self and relatives) is all that gives the right of ownership, modified 
that right and withheld the power to sell land. Now, on the contrary, 



Rent and Land Ozvnership. 2g 

Drey upon them, but otherwise they are soon to be left to un- 
aided self-support, under which some of them have done well 

Government Aid to the Landless. A system of public own- 
ership, therefore, that makes the tenure of a tiller very different 
from that of an owner,^ does not afford the large and varied 
product, and the character development, necessary to maintain 
high civilization. Division of tribal land, to be owned by fam- 
ilies and individuals, came very early. Only thus could the 
with scarcity of land and many occupations open, public policy requires 
easy selling and full freedom of use by the owner, who is the chief gainer 
from using it well, and the chief loser from using it ill. In England 
transfer of land is so costly in lawyers' fees, with titles so uncertain, that 
persons who might buy small tracts are kept from doing so. The easiest 
transfer is that made under the T*orrens or Australian system — now in force 
in Chicago and St. Paul, and spreading to other states — by which the 
county guarantees the purchaser against defect of title. Transfer of land 
will be greatly simplified by the new land for Ireland. New Zealand, to 
place her strangely dependent people on state land, and save them from 
monopolists, has perpetual leases at a fixed rent, by which she controls culti- 
vation and transfer, and prevents speculation. 

^The Self -Seeking of the Tenant is Not Wrong when he is careful to 
get out of the land, before his lease expires, all the value he has put in. 
Progress for one's self, and eventually for all, requires regard from him 
for his own interest as far as his view penetrates, and when his rising 
ability releases him from the need of the village's help he can no longer 
force himself to be contented under its collectivism. The case is the same 
with American farmers' sons, who a few years ago thought nothing of 
working at home until of age, sharing equally with other sons of less 
ability, but who now would rarely be expected thus to incur personal loss. 
Likewise, men in business cannot be expected to engage in competition as 
formerly, when they now perceive its wastefulness and can so easily unite 
in pools and trusts. As individual ability rises, society's ability must rise 
accordingly, in trust and land laws adapted to the times. Evidently man 
is never to be released from the necessity of eternal vigilance. There is 
pathetic futility in the idea of single taxers and socialists that we can 
return to the idyllic simplicity of society's childhood. 

Natural Rights. Sociologists agree on the principle that the various 
rights people now enjoy were permitted in the past, and became settled, not 
because they were natural rights, which a person ought to be allowed to 
possess without having to reason about it, but because their enjoyment by 
individuals was beneficial to society, and to all of society's members. Pri- 
vate ownership of land was thus allowed, and became in time a settled 
right, because it led to steadiest labor, best farming, best equipment of 
fixed capital in improvements, and greatest increase of food to be exchanged 
and supplied to the community. 



30 Getting a Living. 

Hebrew have sat under his own vine and fig tree. Before such 
ownership, it is Hkely as a rule that what trees people had grew 
wild. But in landholding, as in factory laws and municipal 
ownership of water works, the agitation by the socialists for 
public ownership of all land and all business hastened needed 
reforms. The advocacy of the extreme proposal of Mr. George 
also, though it, like the extreme proposals of the socialists, can 
perhaps never be adopted, has been very useful in calling atten- 
tion to the need for reform in landholding and in taxation. 
The changes required by such reforms in ownership are not so 
great as they seem. Under the land law of England, as well 
as of America and other regions where the English common 
law prevails, the state is really the owner at bottom now.^ In 
these countries the state has an unlimited right of taxing 
land, and of taking it (with compensation) for public uses. 
As the placing of a tenant in possession of land as its owner 
is a public benefit, since it improves his character and increases 
product and fertility, compelling the landlord to sell in such 
cases has been recommended in Great Britain, on the same prin- 
ciple upon which he is compelled to sell land at an appraised 
price for a street or a railway. In Ireland the land title lim- 
itation by which a court fixes a fair rent, secures to the ten- 
ant and his heirs unlimited continuance in possession so long 
as the rent is paid and the land properly cultivated (rent 
rates being fixed every fifteen years), secures to him the right 
to sell the lease, and secures to him just payment for improve- 
ments he makes, — would probably have been extended hereto- 
fore to compelling the landlord to sell land to the tenant if 
such compulsion had been necessary. Belief by influential 
opinion in the state's right and duty to enforce such compul- 
sion has doubtless had some effect in the willingness of land- 

^Holders of Land, Not Owners. "The crown has never abandoned the 
claim asserted in the statute of Edward I. [1272-1307] that all land belongs 
to the sovereign as representing the people, and that individuals hold but 
do not o<wn it; and upon this sound and legal principle the state takes land 
from one and gives it to another [for public use, as in a railway], compen- 
sating for the loss arising from being dispossessed . . . The largest estate 
a subject can have is tenancy-in-fee; and that is a holding, not an owning, 
of the soil." None of the different forms of holding were hereditary in the 
earlier centuries after the Norman Conquest of 1066. (Joseph Fisher, 1874.) 



Rent and Land Ownership. 31 

lords to sell. But no compulsion more direct will be needed 
under the recent and practically unanimous agreement, by a 
great conventions of landlords and tenants, on a plan of selling 
voluntarily. Under Irish land laws passed by Parliament in 
1881 and 1885, for assisting tenants to buy, land in small tracts 
has been bought by 72,000 tenants, whose loans from the state 
aggregate about $115,000,000.^ 

Back to the Land. In England also there will doubt- 
less be an increase of the present means of assisting people 
to settle permanently upon land. Many of those of the English 
farming class who now flock to the cities, and swell the ranks 
of the unemployed, might live in plenty if more largely assisted 

^A Final Settlement of the Irish Question will be quickly brought 
about, it is believed, by a pending measure for complete reform in landholding, 
which seems destined to pass Parliament before the end of 1903, almost with- 
out opposition. By this bill, introduced by Mr. Wyndham, the little farms 
tilled by the remaining 400,000 tenants they are to be enabled to buy with loans 
from the British government, to a total of about $500,000,000, the money for full 
payment in cash to the landlords to be raised on 2% per cent bonds. The pur- 
chasing tenant is to pay 3^/4 per cent interest (much less than his rent), of 
which the excess over the bond rate will pay the principal in 68 years, 
making the Irish farmers of that time absolute owners of their land. On 
the $500,000,000 of loans the government will lose nothing but the cost of 
carrying out the reform, but to induce the landlords to sell it is to pay 
them from 5 to 15 per cent above the market price of their land. This 
bonus, estimated at $60,000,000, is to be paid to remove Irish disloyalty, 
which in the Boer war proved to be the weakest point in the empire, and 
which can never be removed by anything less than restoring the people to 
ownership of their land. 

To Heal an Open Sore in Civilization. Besides this full return for the 
outlay, all the public costs of the reform are expected to be balanced 
not only eventually, but also annually, by reduction in the $6,500,000 now 
spent to keep order in Ireland with 13,000 soldiers. The change of land 
ownership, It is believed, will make the Irish peasants as thrifty and as 
loyal as those In France. From loans on land purchases heretofore the 
government Is Incurring no losses. Irish shiftlessness was due to Inability 
to get more than a bare living, rent being raised to take all else. The 
Irish famine arising from failure of the potato crop in 1846, in which 
about a million people perished, together wath the frequent famines that 
have caused the death of many millions in India, China, and Russia 
(3,000,000 in India in 1900 — 10,000,000 a century earlier), came less from 
uncertain climate than from backward Industry, and from living always 
too near the starvation line, with the consequent lack of a surplus for a 
bad season. [Revieii; of Reviews, Feb. 1903.) 



32 Getting a Living. 

as in Ireland with small loans of public money (or with easy 
rents and terms of purchase) to set up for themselves on Eng- 
lish land fast passing out of cultivation. Evidently something 
is wrong when a quarter of the population, largely from lack 
of employment, receive poor relief at some time, while a large 
and increasing area of fertile land is passing to grazing or lies 
practically idle. The capitalist farmers, who formerly tilled 
English land so successfully, can now, since the fall of agri- 
cultural prices, make more profitable use of their capital and 
ability in other business. But the land can at least be made to 
support many who might be set to work upon it. With the 
small amount of capital required, farmers of some experience, 
it would seem, might support themselves and meet easy pay- 
ments toward ownership, whatever the cheapness of food im- 
ported from America and Australia. During the last few years 
some of the thrift and success of Danish farmers have been 
introduced into Ireland by means of cooperative creameries and 
agricultural societies, which teach new methods and arouse am- 
bition to improve.^ The New Zealand government's assistance 
of capable persons to farm ownership, by means of small loans 
and gifts or easy sales of public land, is said by Mr. Lloyd to 
have brought admirable results in most cases. ^ 

'^NortJi American Review, Jan. 1902. 

^The Beneficent Effects of Settling Laborers on Land they can cultivate 
were well set forth by Lord Carrington in the Nineteenth Century for 
March, 1899. In a few rural districts of England hundreds of wage labor- 
ers have developed thrift and sobriety, greatly advancing the well-being of 
their families, by raising live stock upon, and cultivating in spare time, lots 
of an acre or more surrounding the cottages they rent; many have prospered 
as farmers on rented holdings of from four to forty acres ; and some have 
risen to the position of owners of such holdings and of larger farms. Tracts 
of suitable size, for tenants and for buyers, are provided by well disposed 
landlords, by philanthropic associations purchasing land for the purpose, 
and by the local authorities under the allotment laws of Parliament. In 
buying land and in loans for this purpose the county council may use a 
limited amount from public funds. 

A Movement Destined to Spread. At only a few places in England, 
however, despite the marked success described by Lord Carrington, has 
interest in this movement become active, either among laborers or among 
those who might assist them. But it is destined to grow, since nothing else 
promises so much for the good of the poorer classes. In Ireland it has 



Rent and Land Ownership. 33 

But Only Experienced Farmers, or those solid workers who 
reach some success at anything, can make use of loans and easy 
terms toward land ownership.^ The Scandinavians and Ger- 
mans who take up vacant land in America with almost in- 
variable success know their business. Very few of the discon- 
tented socialistic class in cities, who make bitter demands for 
access to the land, could get a living from it if set up without 
rent and with a free equipment. Better things for them must 
come mainly from their own diligence, in effort to deserve and 
hold jobs, and to spend time and money with largest permanent 
results. No amount of social reform will soon change ma- 
terially this old way of getting along. In the cultivation of 
vacant lots by the unemployed in cities, as done at Detroit in 
1893-97, and as now done extensively at Philadelphia,- with 
seed and tools supplied by the poor department or by philan- 
thropists, workers of socialistic ideas may get a supply of pota- 
toes and other vegetables, but better yet, perhaps, they learn 
how small a return in money such labor brings, and how patient 
and industrious one must be to get a living at first hand from 
nature. 

No Land Monopoly in America. For men able to get a liv- 
ing thus, there is no trouble about land monopoly in America — 

become important. Besides the purchase of farms mentioned above, there 
were in 1900 in Ireland 14,888 cottages owned by local government bodies 
and rented to tenants, each with land yielding sufficient to pay the rent; and 
during that year, under a new law, 8,000 more cottages were applied for, 
and $10,000,000 appropriated for buying land and building them. The 
state's main reason for building these cottages in Ireland is the neglect of 
private owners to supply proper housing for the people, which is the reason 
why a number of British cities are building model tenements. The Arena 
of December, 1902, contains an account of a new and strongly supported 
philanthropic movement in England for starting factory towns in the 
country, in order to take the poor from city slums to places where they can 
have healthy homes at low rent, and where by gardening after factory 
hours they can get partial support and develop character. These methods 
of helping the poor to help themselves are perhaps the freest of all from 
pauperizing effects. 

^Unless others of lower capability live in a farm colony managed for their 
special benefit by able philanthropists, like the several very successful farm 
colonies of the Salvation Army located in Ohio, Colorado, and California. 
These are described in Revieiv of Reviews, Nov. 1902. 

^The Independent, July 31, 1902. 
3, 



34 Getting a Living. 

no need for assistance in government loans, as under Great 
Britain's costly land, low wages, and dependent people. Be- 
sides government and railroad land in the West, free to home- 
steaders or sold on long time at from $3 to $io per acre, there is 
everywhere land for a rent of half or a third of the crop, 
or land to be bought low on long credit. The fact that price 
and rent of Western land have risen greatly of late is a desired 
indication; higher prices for products make the taking of a 
farm more remunerative now than it was when land was 
cheaper. A man able to raise a crop, and with a little capital 
with which to cultivate it, and live on while it grows, can usually 
get the use of land anywhere on a reasonable basis. Under the 
good wages and cheap living of this country, if he cannot first 
get this little capital, he will seldom be a man to be depended 
on to raise a crop. Ability to save or borrow capital is the' 
surest evidence of ability to use it. Perhaps the best means yet 
employed to benefit the Southern blacks, who are experienced 
farmers, is to sell them small tracts of land on such terms as 
they can meet. Some companies doing this on a large scale are 
making good profits from their capital thus invested.^ The 
increase of land owning among the blacks is the main evidence 
of their progress. The same is true of the increase of home 
owning among the working class in many of the states. Such 
landholding is unequalled in its effect to save wage workers 
from harmful restlessness, and to develop in them that industry, 
frugality, sobriety, and love of order upon which their own and 
society's welfare depends. The real estate owners are those 
whose stake in a community makes them the most solicitous as 
to its progress.^ 

^The Outlook, Jan. 4, 1902, last page. 

^The Increase of Farm Tenantry in the United States has been con- 
siderable. From 1880 to 1900 the number of farm owners increased 24 per 
cent, but the number of farm tenants increased 97 per cent, the rented 
farms now comprising 35 per cent of the total number. New York state, in 
1900, had 28,669 fewer owners than in 1880, but 14,331 more tenants. Even 
in the new states of Kansas and Nebraska more than a third of the farms 
are rented. (W. J. Ghent, "Our Benevolent Feudalism.") To a large 
extent this increase of tenantry is to be desired, being due to the rise of 
wage workers to independent farming, in which many pass from renting to 
-owning. Tenantry was increased also by the failure of many debt-ridden 



Rent and Land Ownership. 35 

owners during the agricultural depression of 1884-97. Constant effort, by 
the various public and private educational agencies, as well as by the state 
in legislation, will always be necessary to raise the people in self-reliance 
and capability, and to keep them from sinking toward the helpless depend- 
ence so common in older countries. Those who are induced to save money 
and acquire land will need the least bolstering up from society. If unused 
land is taxed at its full selling value, the tens of thousands of acres of 
mountain and forest in the few estates like that of George Vanderbilt in 
North Carolina, and that of Austin Corbin in New Hampshire, will prob- 
ably not be added to until the neighboring people become the landlord's 
serfs. And if the various agencies for the spread of practical knowledge 
and of sound ideals do their duty, the capable farmers will become owners, 
and the few large tracts owned by foreigners or corporations and let to 
tenants in the South and West will probably not increase in size or number, 
but will tend to division among smaller owners, like the bonanza wheat 
farms of the Dakotas. 



CHAPTER II. 
INTEREST. 

The Share of the Capital Owner. In the division of the prod- 
uct of a business, or of the money for which the product is sold, 
a share called interest is awarded to the owner of the capital — 
the tools, machines, and materials used. . In gathering wild 
fruits from hand to mouth, there are only two factors of pro- 
duction — labor and land — the case with animals. The wood 
sawyer's capital, in his saw and buck, is indispensable to use, 
but so cheap to buy that the poorest user of them is also the 
owner ; and his work is so simple, so easily found and so quickly 
paid for, that it may be called pure labor, involving none of the 
employer's management. But the poorest colored cropper in 
the South, farming other men's land for half the product, must 
have so much capital — a horse, a plow, with grain and fodder to 
keep family and horse while a crop grows — that he has to bor- 
row and buy on credit, paying a considerable sum in interest; 
while in his delays, and risks, and exercise of foresight, his 
effort includes the employer's function. 

Capital is Saved to Multiply Product. As the scale of pro- 
ducing wealth rises, from the savage's hunting and arrow mak- 
ing, up toward the immense and complex manufacturing of 
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, more and more capital is required, 
until at the low rate of 5 per cent the United States Steel Cor- 
poration, by several times the largest corporation in the world, 
must pay $15,000,000 of interest yearly to the lenders holding 
its $300,000,000 of bonds, and such dividends as profits permit, 
4 to 7 per cent, to the owners of the capital represented by its 
$1,100,000,000 in shares of stock. Since the better the outfit of 
tools and materials, the more wealth one's labor will produce, 
men from the beginning have used spare time, after supplying 
immediate needs, in improving and increasing the equipment 

{36) 



Interest. 37 

with which they work. In this way wealth is saved, and may 
be added to without Hmit, making useful any reasonable amount 
of labor. Consumable goods, on the contrary, especially such 
as the wild meat and skin clothing of the savages who first 
saved capital, are of httle value after present and approaching 
needs are supplied. Capital exists solely because, when united 
with labor and land, it yields an extra product not otherwise to 
be obtained — multiplies their product hundreds of times in the 
case of machinery, and achieves a great variety of results im- 
possible with hand tools and mere animal power.^ 

^Wealth, Services, Capital, Money. Wealth, of which Political Econ- 
omy or Economics is the science, consists of all material and transferable 
things that people want and will pay for. They also want and will pay for 
services that are not embodied in material things. These services, which 
are often counted as wealth, include those of the teacher, actor, house ser- 
vant, and captain of a pleasure boat. Other labor adds value to things 
material ; that of the carpenter changes lumber into houses, and that of the 
crew of a freight steamer carries wheat from where its value is low to 
where its value is high. Capital, which means wealth consumed or worn 
out in producing other wealth, or in producing services, includes not only 
coal for boilers, raw materials and machinery, but also consumable goods, 
such as groceries and clothing, while the latter are yet in possession of the 
merchant, who adds value to them by supplying them when, where, and in 
what quantities they are wanted. Producing them is not completed until 
they reach the consumer, for whose wants all production is carried on. 
They then cease to be capital and become consumable goods. But the con- 
sumable goods on which a farmer and his family live while cultivating a 
crop, whether stored in his house or commanded with money or credit, are 
included in his capital except the supplies for a short time, say a week. 
Possession or command of such goods enables him to add to his product by 
devoting his labor to production involving time, instead of earning daily 
wages for daily supplies. Land, the most important item of wealth, the 
source of all other varieties, is considered to itself as a separate kind, being 
a limited gift from nature, and not produced like other things by man's 
labor. It is used as capital when farmed, or occupied by a factory or rail- 
road, but as consumable wealth when occupied by a dwelling house, or used 
as a pleasure park. Money, whose use admits of civilization (under which 
men follow trades instead of producing each for himself without exchange, 
as in savage tribes), is a part of the capital of the people as a whole, ren- 
dering a service of inestimable importance. Gold money, in Europe and 
America, or the cheaper silver money in poorer South America and Asia, 
possesses in itself, either as coin or bullion, the full value for which it 
exchanges. Silver and copper money, in Europe and America, embody but 
a part of that value, passing because needed as change, because legal tender 




38 Getting a Living. 

The Justice of Interest May Equal the Justice of Wages. 

The street laborer earning $1.50 per day, who denies himself 
for a series of years many comforts he might have enjoyed, and 
invests his savings in two horses and a wagon, then earns $3.50 ^ 
a day, getting $2 extra for his labor because it is now accom- H 
panied with an outfit of capital. This extra pay is. the interest 
on what he has saved, after deducting from the pay the cost of 
repairing the wagon, of feeding the horses, and enough even- 
tually to buy another team when this gives out. As something 
must also be deducted to provide for risk of damage by run- 
aways, and of horses dying soon, and as the team must be idle 
for a part of the year, the net interest he receives averages but 
a small part of $2 a day. If, having made provision for sick- 
ness and old age, he now deems it wise to regard the present 
more, and to spend for additional comforts, these comforts are 
only the consumable benefits which he gave up long ago by 
saving — multiplying the benefits by postponing them, and get- 
ting them for years from capital, instead of taking them at first 
from wages. These two methods of taking one's comforts are 
open to any person whose income exceeds considerably a bare 
support. Some prefer to take the benefits now, trusting the 
future to take care of itself. Others, by stinting the present to 
provide for the future, hope to get the largest good in the aggre- 
gate of a lifetime, though by loss of savings they may get far 
less than if they had spent at first. In all this labor, self-denial, 
and risk of the team owner, often including loss by misfortune, 
he obviously earns his interest as fully as he earns his wages ; 
and as from the start the purpose of his saving was understood 
and encouraged by society, whose present civilization rests upon 
past saving, and whose progress in the future rests upon saving 
to-day, the payment of interest to him is as just as any other 
payment. Especially clear is this when from inability to work 
he hires his team for the season to another man who gets the 
$3.50 a day, living himself partly upon the money paid him for 
its hire — upon his share in interest. 

for debt and limited in quantity, and because exchangeable for gold. Bank 
and government notes are convenient substitutes for gold, making less of it 
necessary as money, and passing at full value because they can readily be 
exchanged for the gold coin itself. 



Interest. 39 

The Idea that Receiving Interest is Wrong arose, not from 
such obviously just cases as that of the working teamster, but 
from loans of money, which it is easy to view fallaciously. As 
gold coins are as valuable when returned by a borrower as if 
they had been kept idle in the meantime by the owner, interest 
was condemned three centuries ago by Bacon, as it had been 
condemned twenty centuries earlier by Aristotle. But the 
money is wanted only because by purchase it gives possession of 
tools and materials.^ It is for use of these that interest is 
paid, in the case of money as well as in the case of the team. 
A part of the rate of interest is for insurance against the risk 
that the money will not be repaid. By reason of war or calam- 
ity, or of legal technicality, loans may not be collected from bor- 
rowers most reliable. Another part of the rate covers taxes the 
lender must pay on the loan, and rewards him for the trouble of 
taking care of it. The balance of the rate is his reward for 
abstinence — for not personally consuming all his income at first 
instead of saving a part of it as capital ; and later for transfer- 
ring that capital, with the goods it produces, instead of then 
consuming it in self-gratification, or instead of using it and 
getting its product of goods himself. In any sale the seller, in 
a similar way, abstains from using himself the goods sold, or 
from storing or lending them. Though the loan is not repaid 
for a hundred years, the interest is still earned all the time by 
the abstinence of the original lender's heirs. To this effort of 
abstinence, for which interest is the wages, the capita] owes its 
continuous existence. Stopping the abstinence would be con- 
suming the capital.^ Though the heirs be women, unable to use 

^Or of land, in which case the interest is the same as rent — rent for that 
portion of the land's purchase price which is not paid down. The interest 
for the tools and materials has the same basis as rent: they give in pro- 
duction an advantage like that of superior land. 

^Capital Replaced and Perpetuated. The usefulness of capital for 
producing goods is partly measured by time, like the labor power of a 
horse or man. The capital borrowed is continued perpetually, being re- 
paired or replaced, as it is used up or worn out, from its product, which in 
successful production must be large enough to yield, over and above re- 
placement, interest to the lender and profit to the borrower. Replacement is 
easily discerned in a merchant's stock of goods, kept up from current in- 
come. His goods, and a manufacturer's coal and raw material, are circulat- 



40 Getting a Living. 

capital in business, and though they have annual incomes be- 
yond what they could possibly spend in consumption, payment 
of interest to them is as just as payment for wheat grown in 
tens of thousands of bushels by a bonanza farmer in Dakota. 
For use of capital, as for ownership of wheat or coal, there can 
be but one price for the same grade of article in the same 
market, whether that price be paid to a rich man or a poor one, 
since all is transferable from man to man, and since one particle 
of money or wheat can be used instead of another. Under the 
right to buy and sell and hire, a price in interest, for the use of 
the capital to be obtained with borrowed money, is as just and 
as necessary as a price for hiring a buggy or entering a theatre.^ 

ing capital, used and replaced rapidly, the coal and the material appearing 
in the finished article. Factory buildings and machinery are fixed capital, 
used up slowly but still undergoing replacement by repairs and renewal. 
If capital is destroyed by fire, or lost by bad management, the lender has 
the same right to be paid as in case of success. If such risks fell on him, 
the rate of interest would rise greatly. For bearing them the borrower is 
rewarded with profit. 

^The Basis of Interest in the Lower Value of Future Goods. Besides 
the necessary measurement of usefulness by time, interest is justified by the 
fact that a loan gives command of present goods, while its repayment gives 
command only of future goods. In addition to the risk of non-payment, and 
of the lender's having no use for the future goods by reason of his death or 
change of circumstances, future goods rightly are now worth less than 
present goods (i) because present needs must be met at once, while for 
future needs various arrangements may be made previously; (2) because 
people generally under-estimate distant needs and over-estimate their hoped 
for ability to meet them, while also allowing present wants to assume un- 
necessary urgency; (3) because only present goods, in the form of capital, 
render possible the lengthy methods of production (through machinery and 
materials not to issue in consumable goods for a year or two), which meth- 
ods alone will yield to the producer the large output of the modern system, 
and to society its varied flow of supplies. For these good reasons interest 
is not taken from the product of labor, as the socialists assert, but is an 
extra amount of value that is earned and produced by denying present wants 
and accepting the supply of future wants instead — produced by increasing 
the output, and by maintaining processes through which future goods come 
into existence and ripen into the higher value of present goods. Far from 
being taken out of the product of labor, it is interest, by inducing the saving 
of capital and the building of factories, that gives wage workers the good 
living they have in Massachusetts, rather than the poorer living they have 
in Virginia, a state richer naturally but lacking in capital. Capital, and 



Interest. 41 

Where the Wrong* Lies. There is no wrong in receiving the 
market rate of interest, but there may be wrong in the means of 
acquiring ownership of the capital loaned, as there may be with 
ownership of a team hired. Some of the vast fortunes, yielding 
great incomes in interest and dividends, were obtained by de- 
liberate deception — in watering corporation stock sold to inno- 
cent investors ; others of the fortunes by imposing on the public 
in railroad, street car, and trust monopolies ; others by too 
lightly taxed increment in value of city land and other property. 
For these kinds of wrong there are remedies in reform of cor- 
poration and tax laws. Condemnation of interest in times past 
by the Christian church was justified by the fact that most of 
the ancient and mediaeval loans were made, not as at present 
for production, to capable manufacturers using borrowed cap- 
ital to enrich themselves and society, but for consumption, to 
men wasting borrowed substance in riotous living.^ It was 
after the invention of machinery and rise of the factory system, 
about the middle of the eighteenth century, that borrowing cap- 
ital became vitally important in production and progress. Ob- 
jection to interest then reasonably gave way, when it became 
obviously beneficial to all. Moreover, in former times it was 
common for the shrewd lender to take advantage of the un- 
fortunate borrower's necessities. Hence, laws were enacted 
against usury — the taking of too much interest. They were 
useful to protect ignorant borrowers, who, not knowing the 
usual rates, and not keen in the pressure of need to try different 
lenders, would have contracted to pay exorbitant interest if the 

the knowledge of how to use it, makes the difference between the America 
of to-day and the America that barely supported a few scattered Indians, 
though land fertility, timber, and minerals were more plentiful then than 
now. 

^The Justice of Interest on Loans for Consumption. The fact that 
borrowed money may be used, not to buy capital in material and machinery 
for producing goods, but spent for wine to be drunk up at once in a banquet, 
probably lessening the producing value of the drinker's labor, does not 
affect the principle that interest is paid to get the use of capital for the sake 
of its product. Because the borrowed money, could be spent for capital it 
would bear interest; but if there were no such thing as capital, the use of 
goods, or of the money to buy them, would still bear interest, and justly, if 
such use were generally w^anted, and the supply of goods were limited. 



42 Getting a Living. 

lender had not been restrained by fear of law. These usury 
laws had also a good effect where they prevented lending to 
persons whose security did not justify a low rate of interest. 
Usury laws, which were often evaded, and sometimes made the 
trouble worse (raising the rate to cover risk of punishment 
and depriving good borrowers of capital in time of strong de- 
mand for loans), have chiefly fallen into disuse, not now being 
needed. Increase of capital has lowered interest rates, and men 
with sufficient credit to borrow, under the laws now in force^ 
are generally well able to avoid being imposed upon.^ 

The Rate of Interest is determined, like other prices, by the 
demand for and supply of capital to be loaned ; but unlike cash 
prices, it is materially affected by other considerations. Interest 
on American or British bonds, whether the stated rate be 3 or 5 
per cent, is lowered by high selling price of the bond to about 

^The Change of Laws as to Security for Debt indicates how people 
gradually learned the harmfulness to society of ready lending to persons 
not well able to repay. An idea of the lender's power by law over the 
person of the debtor, in past centuries, is afforded by Shakespeare's account 
of Antonio's contract to give over to Shylock a pound of his own flesh in 
case of non-payment; also by the stateVnent in the biblical parable — "deliv- 
ered him to the tormentors until he should pay all." Imprisonment for 
debt was common in England, and in the American colonies, up into the 
nineteenth century. After default of payment such punishment m.ade the 
case worse, throwing the debtor's family on the public and lessening his 
ability ever afterward to make a living; while as a deterrent against 
running into debt the laws must have been ineffectual with the short- 
sighted people chiefly concerned. A person unfit to borrow will now 
readily make extravagant offers and promises, being so absorbed with 
present desire as to be blind to future consequences. By abolishing per- 
sonal punishment, and leaving to the lender nothing as security but the 
property of the borrower and his honest effort, lending was narrowed 
down to people able as a rule to make good use of loans. The prospect 
for successful use of a loan, as affecting ability to pay, is now the matter 
most carefully considered by the lender when he is not otherwise fully 
secured. But pawnbrokers are still closely restricted by license laws. 
They deal with poor and ignorant people in stress of circumstances, and 
can easily impose upon them shamefully, since loans are over-secured 
with personal property left in the pawnbroker's hands to be forfeited in a 
short time. 

The historical development of interest is well set forth in Hadley's 
"Economics." The scientific principles underlying it are treated with 
especial clearness and fullness in Hobson's "Economics of Distribution." 



Interest. 43 

2j/^ per cent, the lowest interest in the world. Reasons for this 
are that ( i ) payment is as sure as any human promise can be ; 
(2) the bonds can be sold at any time for cash, and have many 
years to run, relieving- the lender from the necessity of soon 
finding another borrower; (3) United States bonds cannot be 
taxed by states and cities. At the other extreme, small loans 
for a short time in Rocky Mountain settlements, not well se- 
cured and to persons not specially reliable, are now made at 10 
and 12 per cent. In Northern Michigan the rate charged by 
banks on small loans at two and three months is 8 per cent ; in 
the smaller Eastern cities, 6 per cent. In the Western states 
generally the usual rate for a majority of loans was 10 per cent 
up to about 1880. Interest is high in newly settled regions, 
because there are many openings for profitable use of capital, 
and also because repayment of loans is specially uncertain. In 
England and Holland, old and wealthy countries, interest rates 
range between 3 and 5 per cent. Capital there is plentiful, 
openings for its use few, business old and established, not specu- 
lative, and laws for collection of debts well settled. In a finan- 
cial center, like New York, interest rates on various kinds of 
loans change daily, according to supply and demand. 

The Saving Necessary for Society's Welfare depends, not 
greatly upon the rate of interest, but mainly upon habits of 
thrift among the people, and upon the degree of certainty one 
has that society will be peaceable, orderly, and just, permitting 
men to retain possessions unimpaired, and to transmit them to 
descendants. A person with an income of 4 or 5 per cent on a 
fortune of tens or hundreds of millions could not personally 
consume much of it, and hence would save most of it if interest 
dropped to near the vanishing point. With no interest at all, 
his main satisfaction from his income would probably lie in 
saving it by laying up for his family, by improving his mansions 
and grounds, and by building colleges and hospitals. Many 
who save to get an interest income for old age, or for wife and 
children, would save a larger total under low interest than under 
high, because a larger total would be necessary to yield the 
income desired. If interest fell very low, many would give up 
trying to get a future income in this way ; yet some of them 
might save as much with the intention of using from the prin- 



44 Getting a Living. 

cipal when the interest proved inadequate. Higher interest 
would make a smaller principal sufficient. Hoarding without 
hope of interest, a practice formerly extensive, especially in 
France during the uncertainty of frequent wars, would now be 
continued in savings deposits though interest fell very low. 
Lowering of interest by savings banks has apparently had little 
effect to check increase of deposits, safe keeping being a de- 
sired service, and the principal being well worth saving for the 
future without interest. The teaching that low interest is most 
favorable to increase of wealth, making it easy to obtain capital 
for production, seems to mistake effect for cause. Low interest 
shows that wealth is already plentiful, and the gain in producing 
it small. Yet this teaching is very true so far as interest is 
lowered by the good order of society and the safety of invest- 
ments. 

But Higher Interest Increases Savings, though not to the 
extent to which a higher price increases production of a com- 
modity. By awakening desire for degrees of accumulation not 
otherwise possible, higher interest undoubtedly increases sav- 
ing, and often enterprise also, among all people of thrift that 
know how to get interest, from the millionaire to the newsboy.^ 
Most of these may spend more freely when income increases, 
from rising interest or from business prosperity, but most will 
also pursue their saving with added zeal. A time of enlarged 
income is an opportunity to get ahead. Hence it is admitted 
that with savers of capital, as with producers of a commodity, 
there are some on the marginal line, who would not save or lend 
if the interest rate were to fall lower. The rate must be high 
enough to bring out that portion of the demanded supply of 
loans which is saved with greatest difficulty (cost), and low 
enough to reach the borrower depended upon who cares least 
for a loan (marginal utility).^ In view of these facts there 

^A Benefit to Society from Interest Paying is that it encourages all 
classes to save, and puts the savings into the hands of those best fitted to 
carry on industry. Without this effect of interest, society could not have 
attained anything like its present equipment of capital and output of 
products. Sale of corporation shares has the same effect to gather up 
for industry the savings of the many. 

^Hobson. 



Interest. 45 

would seem to be no danger of interest falling too far, though a 
very low rate might indicate stagnation, or indifference to en- 
gaging in business. 

Saving and Capital Under Socialism require treatment 
here, since a leading tenet of socialism is opposition to private 
ownership of capital and receipt of interest. As shown in 
the preceding chapter, the socialistic state, owning all the 
land, would have to charge rent to avoid injustice to those 
occupying undesirable locations for homes ; but it would be 
sure of possessing its land, in area at least, though in fer- 
tility and improvements it is unlikely that, without individual 
farming and permanent occupancy, much could be expected 
above the standard of barbarism. Capital however — lumber, 
barns, factories, machines — is not provided by nature like 
land. The socialistic state would have no way to get ma- 
terials and machines for enlarging production except by 
stinting present consumption and saving for them — devot- 
ing labor to making them instead of to producing for pres- 
ent use. 

Would Factories Ever Have Been Built? At the beginning 
of civilization socialism, in ownership by the tribe, gave way to 
private ownership of land and capital before cities were built 
or much wealth accumulated. It is undoubtedly true that if 
socialism had continued no such thing as a shoe factory would 
ever have been built. No doubt it was private ownership, both 
of capital and land, that produced houses, jewels, and large 
annual product, to be taxed for the magnificence of ancient 
royalty. There were kings under the earlier socialism, as at 
present under socialistic African tribes, but no wealth to support 
them in grander style than that of a barbarous chief. The 
higher forms of wealth could never have been invented, nor 
could society ever have advanced above the barbarous stage, if 
there had been a lasting socialistic custom by which a new 
implement invented, or a new commodity produced, belonged to 
the tribe as a whole and not to the man who made it. Human 
nature was evidently fitted for private ownership of capital and 
general wealth, not for socialism after the childhood stage of 
society had passed. Early people had the same common sense 
that now leads a farmer to give his son a pig, or the last three 



46 Getting a Living. 

rows of growing potatoes, to make him industrious and 
purposeful."^ 

The Measure of Truth in Socialism. But the fact that indi- 
vidual ownership was decreed by nature in that original 
constitution by which civilization has been evolved, and the 
fact that any approach to complete socialistic ownership of 
capital and industry would now turn society back to barbarism, 
are no evidence against partial socialism, to the extent to which 
conditions have become favorable. Gradual, peaceful, evolu- 
tionary socialism (not sudden, violent, and revolutionary) is 
evidently coming to pass to a considerable extent, as intelligence 
increases, and is favored in all the leading nations by the 
wisest and most patriotic citizens. This degree of socialism 
is a march in society's rise in civilization, a march required 
in nature's grand plan of evolution as truly as was the 
earlier passage from tribal socialism to individualism. From 
primitive punishment by the murdered man's relatives, and 
individual defense of one's property, control of matters of 
justice passed long ago to the state, which has also gradually 
taken charge of a wide field of new services. In the latter, to 

^Socialism Started Now, so considerately as to avoid serious resistance 
by classes dispossessed of property, would have the country's splendid 
equipment of railroads and factories, and some years might pass before 
lessened effort by the ablest men, from not possessing their product 
individually, would result in wearing out the machinery and in enfeebling 
production. But wealth would decrease materially in time, and a return 
toward barbarism set in, hastened by increase of population in large 
families to be supported by others than their parents. If working for 
others, regardless of their merit or of the effect, should come to be regarded 
as a duty, as living alone in caves was once deemed to make men holy, 
socialism might be successful for a considerable time, until natural law 
reasserted itself and dispelled the illusion. Connected with early private 
ownership of land, was safe and permanent ownership of the benefits of 
capital invested upon it, in buildings, tools or machines, drains and fer- 
tilizers. It was this powerful incentive of private ownership, protected 
more and more by custom and law, that led to increase of fixed capital, 
and to progress in production, during the Middle Ages. Without it people 
would have remained few and poor, and modern civilization could not 
have arisen. (Hadley, "Economics," 127.) Individual ownership is now 
the most important means of securing order, and of strengthening character 
and industry. 



Interest. 47 

care of dependent classes, construction of roads, bridges, and 
docks, and care of navigation, has been added supply of indus- 
trial information from consuls and bureaus, with education 
of many kinds ; postal, railroad, telegraph, and telephone ser- 
vices (the latter three in most of Europe), and a variety of 
municipal services. Many of these services to the public, which 
usually are natural monopolies, will soon pass further to gov- 
ernment, in ownership or in close control. There is wide room 
here for extension of public action, especially in industrial 
education, and in the purifying of the crowded slums of cities. 
The encouraging progress now being made will be more suc- 
cessful as people become more capable of self-government. 
Experience in these lines develops capacity for improvement. 
But outside of these monopolistic services, and of other similar 
services yet to appear, together perhaps with eventual state 
ownership of natural monopolies in mines and forests — indi- 
vidual and corporate ownership of land, capital, and industry 
will doubtless continue indefinitely into the future.^ By human 
nature it does not seem that large production, or industrial 
progress, can ever exist without individual ownership much the 
same as that of the present time.- 

In Following the Socialistic Desire to Withhold Interest 
from private hands, society can get for the public all the interest 
income from its capital in schools, post-offices, and city services, 
and by means of franchise, income, and inheritance taxes (not 



i< (I 



'The Farm for the Farmer." Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, though 
their doctrines of the British Fabian Society are the most reasonable yet 
urged under the name of socialism, have a rejoinder that seems very 
inconclusive when they make light of the individualist mottoes, "The 
farm for the farmer, the shop for the shopkeeper" — by replying, "The 
school for the school teacher, the sewer for the sewer cleaner." Individual- 
ists are as ready as socialists to leave to the government those services it 
alone can do, or do well — any service in fact that in all results it can do 
best. "The legislative hall for the legislator" has never been heard; and 
individualists as a rule now welcome, not only public schools and sewers, 
but also public telegraphs, street cars, and many other things for which 
public ownership is best suited, where the voting community is clearly 
able to render the service efficiently, honestly, and economically. Yet 
individual ownership is left as essential as ever in its own field. 

"See the closing portions of the next three chapters for a continuation 
of this line of thought. 



48 Getting a Living. 

to be shifted by raising prices) it can get a considerable per- 
centage of the interest share in the product of capital privately 
owned. If taxes are levied justly and spent wisely, private 
owners — receiving rent, interest, and profits — will contribute 
largely of their incomes without falling below a publicly 
desirable degree of saving, and without harmfully relaxing their 
zeal to increase and improve production. That is, cutting 
down their wages, by taxing them, will not cause them to leave 
or shirk the task society has committed to them, which is to 
originate and direct the work of supplying the varied and 
abundant goods and services produced. This task, outside of 
the monopolistic services previously mentioned, society cannot 
now perform for itself collectively — could not produce enough 
for present population to live on if it tried to do so ;^ nor can it 
ever force the capable to carry on business for a lower reward 
in profit and interest than that which the supply of and demand 
for their service determine justly in the market. Unlike slaves 
(and even they could seldom be forced to do the net amount of 
work they were supposed to do) , the capable rule in society, and 
will doubtless do so always. But as their greatest welfare is 
now seen to depend upon the greatest welfare of the masses 
who buy of them, and work for them, and as the capable of the 
present day are generally as likely to be just and reasonable 
as are others, the relations between class and class can be 
brought by sound reform far on toward perfection. 

What Public Money Will Do. Public money, with but little 
more knowledge of the situation than is now possessed, will 
cleanse and educate the unhappy classes up to the level of com- 

^Could People Get a Living Under Socialism? The oft-mentioned 
contrast is well known between the regularity and general satisfaction with 
which the needs of a great city are supplied, under the competitive system 
of each seeking the interests of himself alone, and the inadequacy, waste, 
and often scandal with which the best government supplies an army, 
though in size the army is not a tenth of the population of the city, and is 
composed only of robust persons. As the American soldiers in the late 
Spanish war, to a large extent, turned away from army rations and 
depended on food from private sources, so under an attempted socialism it 
would soon be found that people were supplying themselves individually, 
as at present, and were far from working for the government alone as they 
were supposed to do. 



Interest. 49 

fortable self-support. Taxes somewhat high the property 
owners could well afford to pay to secure this result, with the 
splendid field for business, and for cultured life, such a society 
would afford. Most of them would pay cheerfully, and make 
efforts to help forward the movement, and most people in the 
other classes would join them, if one condition were complied 
with. This condition is that extreme notions and demands be 
checked, sound plans followed, and public money actually spent 
carefully, every dollar bringing full value, for the one purpose 
of achieving the uplift of society as a whole, not to benefit the 
sellers, workers, and officials to whom it is paid. For voters 
to learn to view things in this way, the only intelligent way, 
and to see that this policy of spending is followed, the only 
honest policy, is all that is required to establish in a few years 
a reality that would be very creditable as a Utopia. Apparent- 
ly, in many respects, the government of some of the European 
cities is now fast reaching this level. 



CHAPTER III. 
THE EMPLOYER AND HIS PROFITS. 

Are Profits Just? In the division of wealth produced, profits 
are the share that falls to the person who carries on the business 
— the employer or captain of industry. If his contract pay- 
ments of rent, interest, and wages take all his product sells for, 
he gets no profit. If they take more, he incurs loss, which he 
must pay from his capital, or from the next year's product. 
The law requires him to pay the three other shares as he con- 
tracted, without regard to whether he gains or loses. But the 
arrangement is just to him, not simply because he knows the 
law when he makes his contracts, but because he is allowed any 
amount of profit, more than all the other shares combined if for- 
tune should so award. Is the employer justly entitled to the 
large profits he sometimes realizes ? Labor leaders often assert 
the socialistic doctrine that labor produces all wealth ;^ and they 

^Labor as Producing All Wealth. So it does in the sense of being one 
of the necessary factors in production. But this is still more true of 
land and sunshine. That portion of the product due to land, or that due 
to capital, is easily determined. Where a man's labor, remaining un- 
changed, is transferred from poor land to better, the extra product is due 
to the fertile land's superiority and justly falls to its owner as rent, which 
was shown in a previous chapter to be necessary. What this man, with 
the same labor and the same land, adds to his product by use of capital 
in machinery, falls justly and necessarily to the owner of that capital as 
interest. What the advantage of using better land is worth, or of using 
capital, the producers determine for themselves, in the rates of rent and 
interest they offer. Owners cannot fix these rates among people capable 
of taking care of themselves. That portion of the product due to the 
employer is determined just as plainly, being all he can realize above his 
costs in previously settled rates of rent, interest, and wages, which rates 
the respective receivers gladly accept in preference to using their land, 
capital, and labor in production each for himself. Neither can the rate or 
amount received by the employer be fixed by him. Except in a few cases 

(50) 



The Employer and His Profits. 51 

do not count with laborers the employer in a large concern, 
whose work of every noticeable kind, including buying and sell- 
ing, and even money counting, is done by others receiving 
wages or salaries. What he does they do not call labor. Many 
seem to believe that for all profits, rent, and interest a country's 
wage and salary receivers are unjustly deprived of what they 
alone have produced and ought to have ; and to hope for a better 
time, when there will be no employers, landlords, and capital- 
ists, but such an organization of industry as will divide among 
the wage workers (then to include everybody, as an employee 
of the state) all the goods and services they produce. Such 
ideas continue to exist because the socialists have never had an 
opportunity to prove, by any approach to a complete trial of 
their plan, the necessity in civilized society for the private em- 
ployer and his profits. 

The Work of Superintendence done by the employer, how- 
ever, would be acknowledged by intelligent socialists as neces- 
sary — as the most important work of the concern, though it 
included nothing but thinking and giving directions to subordi- 
nates. Of all work, thinking is the most essential, and the 
most difficult to do. The results of work come in exact propor- 
tion to the correctness of the thought that directs it, and to the 
efficiency with which that thought is followed. The unsuccess- 
ful, whatever their feelings of injustice, realize that their lack 
is in not knowing how to adjust themselves to the forces sur- 
rounding them. Under complete socialism, with the state own- 
ing all land and capital, and carrying on all industry, somebody 
would have to serve like the present employer as chief manager 
of a factory. If people were allowed any choice as to where- 
withal they would be fed and clothed, and were not compelled 
to take the rations issued to them, like convicts in cells, this 
manager would have to decide what style of goods to make, how 
much of this and of that, where and when to ship the product 
to find those who wanted it, what men to engage as assistants, 
and how to avoid in every way a waste of the people's labor or 
property. In production on a large scale by machinery, the 

of monopoly, easily remedied by honest public action, his profit consists of 
only such additions to prices as the public and his competitors permit as 
just. 



52 Getting a Living. 

only way to get many goods for a given amount of labor, few 
things could be made to order. If the manager had no more 
assistants than were needed, each of them would have all he 
could do to superintend directly his own department. 

High Pay for Rare Ability. This general manager, with the 
perfected production hoped for by socialists, would necessarily 
be a master of business, a rare man, like the present leading 
captains of industry, who must be rare men or more would suc- 
ceed in imitating them. He would hardly fall behind the aver- 
age workman in high notions as to being worthy of his hire; 
and the socialistic society would fare well if he demanded for 
himself no larger share of the product than the present employer 
obtains for his services (that is, his profit less that portion of it 
received as reward for risk). No socialism worth considering 
here would expect men to work long under any arrangement 
by which all shared alike, without regard to amount of work 
done ; nor would it count on any lasting estimate of value for 
one's service contrary to that value fixed by its supply and de- 
mand. And unlike the employer, this general manager would 
bear no losses. His salary would be guaranteed if he honestly 
did his best, whatever society received or failed to receive from 
the factory he managed. He would be a laborer like all the 
rest, and socialism is wanted for the sake of guaranteed employ- 
ment, whatever happens, and at better regular w^ages than now 
prevail. With all working for wages, and with no employers 
to bear society's losses, there would need to be a general scaling 
down at the end of the year if product fell short, and the reserve 
proved insufiicient. 

Pay for Bearing Risk. Profit to the extent of high wages 
for superintendence must therefore be conceded as just and un- 
avoidable. But what of the profit (i to 5 per cent) in uncer- 
tain dividends on shares, in excess of the fixed and guaranteed 
interest on bonds? This excess falls to stockholders who do 
nothing in the business, its control being in the hands of officers 
paid with salaries. The justification for paying the excess of 
dividends over interest is that full value for this excess is re- 
ceived by society in being relieved from risk. Loss falls on 
stockholders alone, not reaching society except so far as it is 
harmed by their misfortune. The cases or amount of loss in 



The Employer and His Profits. 53 

railroads, factories, and stores, that do not pay expenses, ap- 
proach so near to the cases or amount of gain with those yield- 
ing above the average, that the aggregate gains are fully earned. 

Its Justice Continually Being Tested. The sufficiency of 
the net reward afforded by profits, for bearing risk, is contin- 
ually being tested. In times of prosperity, when prospects for 
high profits are good, capitalist employers or stockholders, bid- 
ding with services to society for the profits its buying then af- 
fords, give society more, better, and cheaper goods, until by 
falling prices profits are so reduced that more investments to 
secure themi will not be made In dull times, on the contrary, 
profits are so low, from smallness of sales, and losses so fre- 
quent, that many employers cease bidding for them v;ith serv- 
ices, not a few concerns being closed by failure.^ Society's offer- 
ing of profits is not then sufficient to retain for itself the serv- 
ices of all the many employers who previously were well paid 
when the offering of profits was larger. Profits, like rent of 
land, and like the gain falling to a speculator in land or in 
w^heat, are kept just by the bidding of those competing to secure 
them. When profits are high, competitors offer goods cheaper,, 
and bring profits down to the average ; when rent is high, bid- 
ding for land, raising its value, brings down the percentage of 
annual return to the owner ; if price of wheat promises to be 
high in the future, present prices rise until the prospective gain 
becomes only a fair return for interest, storage, insurance, and 
risk of a price still lower. 

This Individualistic and Competitive System of industry 
gives society the best, cheapest, and most rapidly improving 
supplies ; places the risks on an expert class who make a busi- 
ness of bearing them, at the lowest charge in profit that will be 
safe, either to them or to society, in view of society's injury 
by their failure ; and develops in the only possible way (namely, 

^By starting many enterprises when gains are sure, thus enlarging prod- 
uct and lowering prices, and by suspending operations when gains fall 
too low, thus raising them for those continuing, the average income from 
lines of business not monopolized is kept at a point near the salaries of 
those who are able, in personal ability and in command of capital, to 
become employers themselves — higher than salaries to balance extra risk, 
and to balance interest on capital owned, but lowered somewhat by a 
common desire to be one's own master. 



54 Getting a Living. 

by direct reward in profit), the enterprise, ingenuity, energy, 
and courage that alone could have made modern civilization. 
The opposite of all this — socialism — in trying to shield people 
from the hardness of the strenuous life, would deprive society 
of civilization's benefits, which by strenuousness alone were de- 
veloped, and by it alone can be maintained. The mission of 
socialistic teachers, a necessary mission, is not to abolish 
the system of competition, as socialists desire, but is to rid it of 
harmful monopoly, and to provide better for lifting up the 
weaker classes. In its own distinctive demands socialism is 
doomed to failure, by sheer impossibility under the laws of 
human nature ; but in its effect to bring about moderate and rea- 
sonable reforms it is proving in many lands a beneficent success. 

The Value of the Employer's Superintendence, and the jus- 
tice of his profits, are appreciated by intelligent workmen, who, 
when in a calm mood, do not assent to the idea that he is largely 
useless or gets too much for his services. They understand the 
difficulties of the foreman near them, and when his place be- 
comes vacant one of them will sometimes decline to accept it 
because of a realized lack of managing ability. The one who 
does accept the place has then, if not before, a fair appreciation 
of the labor performed by the higher managers and the em- 
ployer. Especially does a workman learn to know the value 
of the employer's labor when he works for a weak and unsuc- 
cessful concern, made such by an employer's incompetence. 
But he learns most effectively when he undertakes a small busi- 
ness of his own. If not specially fitted for it by nature, he will 
soon envy the happy condition of his hired men, who simply 
put in the time, with average effort of course, but without 
anxiety as to what is done or as to where the money comes 
from. In a small establishment it is generally easy to see that 
the employer works hardest of all. The others must have their 
pay on time, profit or no profit ; but in many cases he spends 
his capital and strength for a bare living, and this in anxiety 
and mortification. Peace comes when by failure he is placed 
back in his old position as an employee. He can be proud as an 
employer, and avoid burdensome labor, only when his business 
is prosperous.^ 

^What Percentage of Business Men Fail? The usual estimate seems to 



The Employer and His Profits. 55 

That the Employer's Profits are Wrongfully Taken has 

found lodgment in the minds of so many persons that it requires 
further discussion. Karl Marx, the chief founder of the social- 
be that about nine-tenths of the men who engage in business for them- 
selves fail at some time in their career. This estimate seems too high, in 
view of the many junior partners who avoid risk by entering established 
firms, though it may be true if small and unpromising concerns are 
counted. But despite the large percentage of business men who have 
failed at some time, it seems that comparatively few of them return 
permanently to working for wages. For those failing, and unable after- 
ward to reach solid success, there is a wide field in conducting small 
enterprises, and in various kinds of agency work on commission. 

So Scarce is Managing Ability, and so necessary, that men who clearly 
possess it need not have capital of their own; others will gladly lend it 
to them. Officials at high salaries are taken from one corporation by 
another for the sake of their services. A railway manager, working 
like a lawyer if not like a laborer, is believed to earn all he receives, some- 
times above $50,000 a year. Figure-head positions would be given to a 
company's own leading stockholders. Carpenters, bridge builders, and sail- 
ors know that the head work of deciding what to do and how to do it, is 
far more difficult and important than the hand work of carrying out the 
plans. 

How Hard the Capitalists Work. The successful man of affairs, as a 
rule, strains harder in thought and effort than even the hardest workers 
among those receiving wages and salaries. The strain of labor on active 
capitalists, and on their leading managers, continually making large trans- 
actions, is perhaps greater than on any other class. Its intensity is under- 
stood by those coming in contact with them. The phrase "a busy man" 
suggests an employer or manager. So far as their work is done easily, they 
are using a gift of aptitude from nature, or an ability gained by practice. 
With an intensity of effort equal to that of a typical employer, a wage 
worker of moderate ability would seldom fail in America to become the 
owner of some property — to reach comfortable circumstances. The idea of 
fatigue being caused by manual labor alone is not held by workingmen 
with any variety of experience. Perhaps there is no kind of work more 
exhausting, to both body and mind, than that of a short-hand reporter, sit- 
ting in a comfortable chair but keeping up with a rapid speech. 

That Higher Kinds of Work are Agreeable, while the lower kinds are 
monotonous and irksome, is an assertion often made by writers with 
socialistic tendencies. It is doubtful if there is any truth in it. The thrifty 
Italian rag picker in New York that is saving money and getting ahead is 
probably as happy as the merchant up town who in his sphere has reached 
a similar degree of success. Any one of the large class who have raised 
themselves, whether much or little, knows that his satisfaction arises from 
the rate and public notice of his progress, and that it may be greater when 



56 Getting a Living. 

ism taught to-day, seemed to think that the employing class, 
according to a studied design, consciously brought about, for 
their own selfish gain at the workmen's unjust loss, the change 

he mounts the lower rounds of the ladder than when he mounts the upper, 
since his circumstances may render the lower steps the more creditable. In 
view of his youth it is likely that Commodore Vanderbilt enjoyed his work- 
ing night and day while winning success with his first boat line, far more 
than he enjoyed the later steps of the progress by which he became king of 
the railroad realm. It is the pride in achieving, or in simply doing good 
work, that gives the satisfaction, down to the lowest grade of labor. While 
being born industrious is a great advantage, that is perhaps less than the 
effect which honest effort at industry has to make one like it. Perhaps the 
lazy and inefficient can generally shake off their fault if at first they can 
force themselves to earnestly try. Social station and environment are noth- 
ing here: the willing and the thrifty (who are almost universally to be 
counted with the happy) may be as numerous in one class as in another. 

And Those Having No Ambition Get Their Satisfaction in Ease, 
if socialistic discontent does not lead them to clamor for, as a gift from 
society, the good they refuse to make the necessary effort to attain. In 
America not many who are really troubled by fear of want are unable to 
provide against it, though the socialist's picture of the worthy poor's dread 
of the gaunt wolf is partly true of over-crowded Europe. The Hindoo's 
present living, just above the starvation line, he positively prefers to a 
better living for larger effort. It is well known that the lazy and shiftless, 
such as tramps and some classes of Southern Negroes, get out of life a kind 
of enjoyment that satisfies them very well. Moreover, aside from the merit of 
one's effort, the common laborer's total relief from anxiety, as to certainty 
of success in the work he does, gives him a rest of mind never known by 
the author or the artist, unless the latter be a genius. Many a young man 
in college, struggling for days over the writing of an essay, and wondering 
whether or not he is really fitted for the profession he seeks, has envied the 
man who delivers his coal. 

In All Occupations There is the Same Difference between routine 
labor any one can do, and effort requiring independent thought. The 
country editor turns with relief from getting business, making contracts, or 
writing editorials, to the routine work of posting his books or setting type. 
The mechanic knows the same difference between a new piece of work he 
must study out and another piece he has often done before. Though ob- 
viously untrue is the complaint by which the socialists attempt to throw on 
society all the blame for poverty and ill success, there ought to be a more 
rapid elevation of the poor and weak to a plane of comfortable self-support, 
an elevation easily practicable by united effort on reforms generally agreed 
upon. This will leave in force in society only those necessary penalties by 
which nature makes it pay to be virtuous ; and while leaving unchanged the 
differences in wealth due to differences in capacity and in saving, will yet 



The Employer and His Profits. 57 

to the present factory system from that original production in 
which everything produced belonged to the laborer. This is 
the theory of exploitation. But the original kinds of produc- 
tion have not changed. Now, as in the beginning of society, 
wild berries and game are free to the taker where land is plenti- 
ful, as they were then, and he still requires no capital to speak 
of. When population increased, land was appropriated, and in 
some form bore rent, in the days of Abraham and Lot as well as 
at the present time.^ Ancient handicraft production still sur- 
vives. A tailor or a shoemaker, working alone with his own 
hand tools, keeps all he can make, just as he did a thousand 
years ago. He still does the same when he buys a sewing 
machine and hires a wom.an to sew ; and if by years of self- 
denial the shoemaker adds machines until he has a large factory, 
he feels that his right to own all these and their product is as 
good as was his right to his hammer and the first pair of shoes 

secure, for all degrees of ambition, a near approach tc equality of satisfac- 
tion in proportion to merit, whether one's class be high or low. 

That All Superior Labor Power Was Derived From Society's Experi- 
ence, whose demand also made possible labor's result in wealth, and that 
hence all the superior worker's product above that of the average man 
should fall to the state, to be divided according to needs, — is naturally a 
favorite doctrine with the socialists. It is untrue, and in several respects. 
First, to the superior man, however skillful, effort is disagreeable; and if 
he received no more than the average in product he would give little if any 
more than the average in labor, taking his extra advantage in ease. Hence, 
from him no appreciable excess of product would be obtained, while now 
the excess is large, and society has the use of all he does not personally 
consume. Second, rise of civilization benefited him no more than others. 
As a savage he surpassed them as much in killing game for himself as he 
now surpasses them in earning money under exchange. Third, to him 
their demand, giving value to his products, is worth no more than to them 
is his demand giving value to theirs. Moreover, as his inventions and 
enterprises, bringing civilization, arose more from effort and choice, and less 
from unavoidable need, than did their value-making demand, he seems to 
have done more for society than it has dons for him. 

^A recently discovered code of Babylonian laws, in force about 2250 B. C, 
prescribes many regulations for rent paying. {The Independent, Jan. 15, 
1903.) Several centuries later, for "four hundred shekels of silver, current 
money with the merchant," Abraham bought a field, with its cave and trees, 
which was "made sure unto him for a possession in the presence of all that 
went in at the gate of the city." (Genesis xxiii.) Thus was his deed 
recorded. 



58 Getting a Living. 

he made. His factory would never have been built if there had 
been any doubt as to who was to own it ; and the effect of his 
enterprise to increase employment and goods adds to society's 
benefit more than to his own. 

Did Capitalists Want the Change to Machinery? Employ- 
ers in England a century and a half ago, settled in business with 
their few hand- working journeymen and apprentices, were 
sorry enough when invention forced them to give up their com- 
fortable conditions. Many of them were ruined by lack of 
capital or of skill for machinery production. The few invent- 
ors, then as now, spent money and labor for years, with no cer- 
tainty of success, to perfect the machines that have made mod- 
ern civilization. They wanted to benefit themselves by serving 
society, and probably regretted that their own progress unavoid- 
ably caused trouble to hand manufacturers. So it has been 
ever since. Better conditions in society are born from some- 
body's travail. Only a manufacturer here and there, about to 
build a new plant, rejoices over the invention of improved ma- 
chinery. To others it brings loss, necessitating large outlay, 
and removal of old style machinery but partially worn. 

Laborers Benefited Most of All. The entire march of im- 
provement has probably benefited society as a whole more than 
either inventors or manufacturers ; but most of all it has bene- 
fited laborers. The difference for the better with laborers to- 
day over those of 1760, in all civilized nations, is vastly greater 
than the difference for the better with capitalists and land own- 
ers. Well-to-do people had then all the power there was in 
government, and all the enjoyable possession. Working people 
now, under capable leadership, can control the government, by 
following those wise policies which alone can prevail, by whom- 
soever supported ; and they will not lack in enjoyable possession 
when by their own efforts, aided with the sound laws and the 
practical education the public will cheerfully concede, they find 
each for himself, and heartily do, the work in which one's labor 
product will be worth the most. 

No Essential Change in Any Production. Not only in the 
hand work of the shoemaker, but in all production, there has 
been in real essentials no change in the system of making wealth 
and getting a living since society grew able to leave the protec- 



The Employer and His Profits. 59 

tion of childhood in the bosom of the family tribe. In Greek, 
Roman, and Bible history, back to the earliest times, where 
there was any pretense to civilization there was also division of 
labor, with individual production and individual accumulation 
of wealth. People left the home family and started up for 
themselves as soon as safety and order prevailed to a tolerable 
degree. The merchants of Tyre and Sidon traded with ships 
along the Mediterranean Sea, and grew rich, 1200 years before 
Christ, just as the merchants of Venice and Genoa did 1200 
years after Christ. Tyrian purple was a fine manufactured 
fabric of the earlier period, as Flemish cloth and lace were in 
the later period. Commerce had in the days of Solomon gold 
of Ophir and cedars of Lebanon, as it now has gold of the 
Klondike and pine of Michigan. People have obtained wealth 
in every age in the best way known, working with slaves or 
hired men, poor tools or better, according to the custom of the 
time. They used improved implements and machinery just as 
soon as they had them. It was the product they wanted — food, 
clothing, and other useful things — in the easiest way they could 
get it. A great factory costing a million is used now, not be- 
cause it is modern, but because to all connected with it, the wage 
workers no less than the owners, it yields the largest quantity 
of useful things in proportion to the labor and capital employed. 
Which Class Has Served Society Most? Instead of the 
labor now done by wage workers having produced all wealth, 
by far the most important parts of the world's work have al- 
ways been done by the employer. Up to the time of the inven- 
tion of machinery in the eighteenth century, he toiled in the 
shop with his own hands, and presumably did the most difficult 
parts of the work. In the present age it is he who studies 
unceasingly to make the product just as the people like it best, 
and at lower and lower cost by improving methods, not by 
lowering daily or hourly wages if he is progressive. The fact 
that he does this for his own selfish gain, in order to sell larger 
quantities, does not keep the consequent falling of prices from 
passing practically all the advantage in time over to society; 
and is infinitely better than if his motive was to be brotherly 
and help people, as socialism would prefer. In the latter case 
not only would his action be likely to change soon from helping 



6o Getting a Living. 

to robbing, but at best it would bring injury by making him a 
lordly dispenser, and the people pauperized dependents. Orig- 
inal work, in inventing and improving things for society, has 
always been done by employers, or by men working for them- 
selves. When the wage earner, thinking deeply on his work, 
becomes an inventor, his contrivance belongs to him, and his 
work on it is (or ought to be) for himself, not for his employer, 
unless he is hired to invent. The regrettable fact that often for 
lack of means he cannot reserve the benefit for himself, proves 
the transcendent importance of the employer's capacity to save, 
borrow, and preserve capital, without which capacity and capital 
any number of workmen, of whatever skill, could not carry on 
effective production. 

The Three Requisites for Business. The young workman 
preparing to establish a shop of his own acquires first the great- 
est necessity of all, namely, capability to carry on business. 
Meanwhile he saves money for years, to purchase the second 
requisite — capital in machinery and materials, with which cap- 
ital we may here include use of land. Then, but not before, he 
is ready to employ workmen, which are the third requisite. In 
a number of occupations the first requisite will answer alone for 
a while, its possessor obtaining capital by borrowing, and doing 
his work himself. This most necessary man in society, the cap- 
tain of industry, must come first or there will be no production. 
With the earliest tribes of men, as with the pioneers who settled 
America, it was the leading workman's thinking out what to do 
and how to do it, not the labor exerted afterward by him and 
his helpers, that was the main essential in bringing results. So 
it is to-day, not only with great factories but also with the small 
industries, including farming, in which industries perhaps 
nearly half the country's workers are still independent producers 
not working for wages. Development of new territory, or of 
industrial opportunities of any kind, must await the coming of 
the employer, to whom others gladly sell the use of capital and 
labor.^ And finally the most conclusive proof of the pre- 
eminence of the employer's service to society is the rate of pay 

^It is in a large industry already established that Mr. Carnegie's illustra- 
tion is true — likening labor, capital, and managing ability to the three legs 
of a stool, no one of which is more important than another. 



The Employer and His Profits, 6i 

he receives. What people will pay is the crucial test of the rela- 
tive value they set upon the many kinds of commodities and the 
many grades of labor. Since outside the ranks of the large 
employers there are many times more men who are fully as^ 
intelligent, it is not to be supposed that these employers are 
deceivers or cheaters. In the continuance of the system of 
profits from century to century, it must be true that they are 
well earned. 

Society ^s Great Bargain. The whole system of division of 
labor, and exchange of goods between different classes of pro- 
ducers, was allowed to grow up at first because it was found 
that each person thus obtained most for his labor, and hence that 
welfare was greatest for society as a whole. Private ownership 
of machines and of articles made, like private ownership of land, 
was permitted because the owner was thus encouraged to pro- 
duce more than he would otherwise have done. The more he 
produced, the larger was the community's flow of supplies, and 
the more of his commodity was given in exchange for the com- 
modity of another. Kings and ruling nobles found that besides 
being better satisfied himself he was more useful to them as a 
self-directed owner than when held under closer control as a 
serf. The same principle prevails to-day. It is the freedom 
of the wage earner to choose what he will do that throws on 
him the responsibility for his own living, above a pauper's sup- 
port. Those were slaves and dependents of the family, having 
no choice, whose support was guaranteed. Under socialism it 
is proposed that state officials assign men to their tasks — that is, 
rule as slaves the many who could not influence the officials. 

Socialism is Rejected, not because society cares more for the 
employer and land owner than for the wage worker, but be- 
cause no thinkers but a few enthusiasts can see in it any other 
result than lessened production, large families to be supported 
by others than their parents, and eventual starvation for those 
unable to scramble for themselves. The payment of great 
profits to the employer supplying a demand well, is willingly 
submitted to by the public, not only because such profits must 
be allowed to such an employer to induce the employing class 
to .take the risks of introducing improvements, but chiefly be- 
cause without the employing class society would have to bear 



62 Gettinp- a Living-, 



the risks itself, in some form of public industrial control in- 
capable of anything like equal results.^ In the present capital- 
istic system, with product divided in rent, interest, wages, and 
profits, all determined chiefly by competition in supply and de- 
mand, society finds that the production by which it is fed and 
clothed is kept in the hands of the men who can give largest 
values, others being crowded out by their own miscalculation 
or incompetence. No way appears by which this natural 
selection of the fittest could possibly be approached in effective- 
ness. The socialistic plan, to elect managers for all industries 
by vote of the people, the ablest socialists would be ashamed to 
propose if there were a possibility of at once giving it a trial. 
With all the enlightenment, in the few and simple enterprises 
carried on by cities the waste or corruption among officials, 
and those they hire or buy from, is commonly notorious. The 
employer's field is now open to all, without an election. Except 
in the few monopolized lines, which society is preparing to 
control in a special way, any person, high or low, can enter any 
business, large or small, or can devise a new business for him- 
self. He needs only to produce what people want, at the price 
they will pay.^ They ask no more when they come to sell to 

^Hadley, "Economics," 289. 

^^The Socialistic or Labor Theory of Value, often to be detected in labor 
discussion, which is that a commodity should bring a fair return for 
the labor spent upon it, would tend to turn the motives around. Under this 
theory a person might get, not what he wanted to buy, but what the other 
party wanted to sell. Though apparently kind and considerate, a more 
unsound idea could scarcely be thought of. Life would become one great 
system of charity. It would make it the duty of people drenched by a cold 
rain at a picnic to buy the poor man's lemonade. Such a notion of value 
would change the whole process of getting a living, which by nature con- 
sists of supplying one's own wants, not those of others, and with the leasst 
expenditure. Why not consider beforehand what people want and will pay, 
and devote labor to that line of production in which it will bring most? 
Each then helps himself as nature evidently intended by her first law of self- 
preservation, and in the process helps most effectively all others, not trying 
to supply wants guessed at, as in the waste of giving presents, not weaken- 
ing by charity their ability to take care of themselves, and not abusing a 
sacred sense of brotherliness that is to be reserved for their special needs. 
The buyer knows not how much in labor an article cost its producer, but 
he does know how much in labor the buying of it saves to himself. Each is 
thus induced to do his best, promoting self-development and general prog- 



The Employer and His Profits. 63 

him. No expression by vote of the pubHc's will could so effect- 
ively hold the manufacturer to producing what society wanted 
as his present necessity of bearing the loss in case its will is dis- 
regarded. It would be a crude and unworkable control of pro- 

ress, and making production so large as to provide well for the unfortu- 
nate, through private charit>' and the state. The motto, "All for each, and 
each for all," is thus carried out infinitely better than it could be under any- 
possible socialism. 

Is It Right That Rich and Poor Must Pay the Same Price? This 
equality of payment appears in all selling and hiring. The millionaire, 
who would save capital with interest at only i per cent, gets the full 4 or 5 
per cent necessary to induce the marginal man to save at all. The strong 
laborer is paid as much as the weak, and as much for the first hour, when 
labor may be a pleasure, as for the last hour, when he may be faint from 
fatigue. The poor farmer, just getting a living, receives no more for wheat 
than does the immensely rich and perhaps dishonest speculator. The case is 
the same with buyers. To sell the whole supply, the price to all is put 
low enough to reach the person who cares least for the article sold. Others 
would pay double for it rather than go without, and many times as much 
in the case of that portion of food necessary to sustain life. But there is 
nothing wrong in this prevalence of one price in a market. One reason for its 
necessity is that to attempt to determine a buyer's or a seller's degree 
of need would make every case of bargaining a contest in beggary and 
fraud, inducing men to appear as needy as possible. Another reason is that 
an article can be bought for one purpose and used for another. A person 
cannot be made to pay more for the loaf that keeps him alive than for the 
loaf he barely cares for, if he has liberty to use the latter loaf for the 
former; and if the rich man sold more cheaply because he could afford to 
do so, he would get all the trade. 

No Exploitation in Having One Price for All. Likewise, because the 
uniform pay of a group of men is fixed by the product of the last or mar- 
ginal man, who is just above the point of not being hired at all, the men 
first hired, whose individual product would have been larger if they had 
been left with all the tools and materials, are not exploited by the employer. 
Assigning a share of the tools and materials to the later men reduced the 
product of the earlier. Men are hired and goods are bought until it does 
not pay to buy or hire more. The earlier sellers and workers cannot shut 
out the later without robbing them and the buyers through monopoly. No 
person has a right to demand that another buy his labor or his goods. That 
is justly considered beggary. People produced for their own consumption 
alone until exchange grew up from such an offer by the buyers as the seller 
for his own sake was glad to accept. By the degree of want for the least 
desired portion bought, prices are fixed all around. What one loses from 
low. prices as a seller he gains as a buyer. His income soon becomes outgo. 
The value of his savings depends upon low prices for capital goods; when 



64 Getting a Living. 

duction to place it under state officials, elected and influenced 
by roundabout methods, with losses from mistakes not falling 
on them but on society. Apart from difference of wealth based 
on difference of service value, there is no more "wage slavery" 
(one of the many epithets whose rhetorical force counts largely 
in socialism) than there is of employer's slavery.^ Either the 
wage worker or the employer can change his location at will, 
but each is held relentlessly to doing what society wants done. 
Evidence of Fitness to Carry on Business. Possession of 
capital, or of ability to save or borrow it, is one of the first 
evidences of fitness to carry on business. If a person with 
inherited capital proves unfixt and fails, the loss is chiefly his 
own, not society's ; and he gives way to others who survive for 
the reason that they serve society best. By loans of capital 
from the state to cooperative workers, under Lassalle's plan, 
political influence would waste the state's capital on the unfit. 
Moreover, the state's help here is not needed, since a man of 
capacity to be an employer can find capital himself. If private 
capitalists will not lend to him, the state ought not. All those 
unable to prove this capacity serve society best as wag'e workers, 
and themselves also. In but few cases, whether in one class or 
the other, will a person long get more than his service is worth. 
It is useless to attempt to place him where he does not belong. 

he produces for his own family alone, without exchange, he is no more 
interested in high prices as a producer than in low prices as a consumer. 
By each person caring for himself, buying as cheaply as he can, he fares 
infinitely better than if provided for as a child, and develops manhood in- 
stead of imbecility. Nature evidently intended the helping of others to be 
exceptional. It so weakens their ability and desire to care for themselves 
that the task of helping soon passes beyond the power of those by whom the 
help is rendered. The whole plan of distinctive socialism and communism 
is about as absurd and impossible as a system of prices varied according to 
need or to labor spent. The only possible value is that of the present 
system, based on supply and demand, without regard by the buyers as to the 
producer's labor or cost. He will attend to that best, leaving the buyer to 
consider simply the gain on his own side. Nothing will ever give a thing 
value but the degree of want for it by persons having something to ex- 
change. 

^In this epithet wage slavery there is the same reckless exaggeration that 
there is in the socialistic claim that all private ownership is robbery, and 
hence all collection of rent, interest, and profits. 



The Employer and His Promts. 65 

In the ranks of wage earners most people are needed. The fact 
that success in business is so difficult shows that industry is in 
good hands, and that society is being well served. 

The Present System is Just. Each share of the product is 
earned. Whoever owns the land, the state or a private citizen, 
demand by more than one person for the use of it will give rise 
to rent, at rates fixed by what those desiring it deem it to be 
worth. Interest has the same basis. In the supply of capital 
within reach, and in the demand for it to use in production, the 
interest rate is what borrowers consider the use of capital to be 
worth, and there would be such a rate if capital were owned by 
the state. Aside from the few cases of monopoly unjustly 
obtained, the employer earns his share. For his success or 
failure, others are not concerned. Having different sources of 
supply, they buy of him only when it pays them or suits them to 
do so. In the prices at which they buy, people capable of buy- 
ing do not pay profit to help him, nor for this purpose do his 
competitors refrain from under-selling him. They let him have 
the trade because they cannot afford to take it by selling cheaper. 
The wage worker earns his share, except in the few cases when 
he is employed, not for the sake of his product value, but to 
render him aid. By finding out what each employer in reach 
can be induced to pay for labor, as the market is tried by sellers 
of commodities, the worker will get all his labor is worth. If 
employers are half so ready to destroy one another, by cutting 
prices for their goods, as socialists claim, they will not stand 
by, without offering more in wages, and see a competitor gain 
from hiring men at a rate too low. The only test of value for 
labor, as for all else, is what people will pay for it. The wage 
worker deserves from society, and has generally received, more 
considerate treatment in some respects than the three other 
sharers of the product, since by nature and experience he is less 
able to take care of himself. Their undue influence is declin- 
ing, as the worker acquires and exercises political power, and as 
society learns to understand the situation. Possession of equal 
rights, with the intelligence to use them, deprives the workers 
of the special consideration accorded to persons in a position of 
dependence. The non-socialistic trade unionists are glad to 
relinquish the one for the other. Society's duty to wage earn- 

5 



(^ Getting a Living. 

evs, for their good and its own, is to teach each to turn out the 
most vahiable product of which his nature is capable. The 
iundamental principle of the present competitive system of 
industry is morally right. To each person it gives, among 
people prepared for it, all the wealth he produces — all that his 
labor, his land, his capital, or his management, is worth to the 
buyers of it and to society.^ 

Capitalism an Efficient but Complicated Machine. But 
like a highly developed machine, the modern capitalistic system, 
producing, like such a machine, the largest desirable results, 
requires a high grade of intelligence, lack of which has caused 
the system's present disorders. By growth of intelligence, and 
of order and safety, enabling each to do better for himself 
than the family or the state could do for him, the socialism of 
tribal times passed away, and also mediaeval state interference, 
in which the law attempted to set prices and wages, and ham- 
pered industry with many restrictions. Invention and improve- 
ment have gone forward so rapidly that the people's intelligence 
is yet far from equal to the task of bringing the capitalistic 
machine under complete mastery. But society will not abandon 
it, in compliance with the demands of socialism — will not give 
up the Empire State Express to return to the ass of Baalam. 
By removal of monopolistic abuses, in connection with railroads, 
trusts, and taxation of vacant land, by enactment of a few wise 
laws to protect labor, and by educational and industrial develop- 
ment of economic intelligence and of individual capacity, the 
present capitalistic system of getting a living can be, and is 
being, brought far toward perfection. Besides, whatever truth 
there may be in socialism, whose possession of merit in pointing 
out capitalism's abuses is cheerfully acknowledged by social- 
ism's opponents, the only safe way to reach socialism is by 
doing these things first. Progress in them is fast bringing 
society to much that socialists desire. 

7. B. Clark. 



CHAPTER IV. 
COOPERATIVE INDUSTRY. 

A Less Visionary Plan than Socialism for getting rid of the 
employer, and for saving his profits for the workmen, is co- 
operation — ownership and management of a factory by all those 
who do its work. They then get also some of the valuable 
experience and self-development to be obtained only in conduct- 
ing independent business. Cooperation is called productive 
when engaged in such industries as manufacturing or farming ; 
it is called distributive when engaged in merchandising. 

Productive Cooperation of a simple kind is common in Rus- 
sia and Italy, where gangs or societies of laborers undertake 
collectively contracts for public and private work. Such con- 
tracting, to do common labor, by men without capital, has long 
occurred occasionally in England, and in unimportant cases 
occurs now sometimes in the United States, in different occu- 
pations, when a few men agree to do a piece of work by the job. 
Where only two work together, a common practice in both coun- 
tries among miners furnishing their own powder, it is a case 
of partnership rather than cooperation. The same might be 
said of three or any other small number, especially when they 
hire additional help. The separate gangs of men employed in 
building locomotives and steel ships are piece workers rather 
than contractors, since they do not supply the tools or materials, 
and do repetition work, in w^hich there is little uncertainty as to 
time required. At the American lake ports officials of the long- 
shoremen's local union furnish the men needed and the pay is 
divided equally between the members of each gang; but the 
labor is done simply on the piece work system, the union bearing 
no responsibility further than to give the satisfaction necessary 
for retaining the favor of dock managers. In most or all the 
cases just mentioned the line between contracting and piece 

(67) 



68 Getting a Living. 

working may not be clear. The New Zealand government, as 
far as practicable, has all of its railway excavating, and other 
construction work, done by groups of workers called co- 
operators; but as the government supplies the capital and 
superintendence, taking the important risks, and carefully 
guarding the men's welfare, often having the work done mainly 
to help them — it would seem more correct to call them its em- 
ployees, paid in equal shares of the total sum, instead of bv 
the day or by individual output. This statement may apply 
somewhat to the Russian and Italian cooperation. 

Of Cooperative Manufacturing by Unaided and Inde- 
pendent Groups of workers, supplying all capital themselves, 
and bearing all risk, the first recorded cases were a few scat- 
tered flour mills and bakeries started in England and Scotland 
by workingmen at the close of the eighteenth century, to pro- 
tect themselves as consumers from high prices for bread. One 
of these, established in Hull in 1795, continued for fifty years. 
From 1828 to 1834 what was called the union shop movement 
appeared over England among workingmen in from 400 to 500 
societies, started first as little stores to supply members with 
groceries, and reaching in many cases the stage of employing a 
few members in manufacturing textiles, shoes, and furniture. 
In 1834 this movement suddenly collapsed. The capital of the 
societies was scanty, consisting at the start of a few shillings 
from each member, and not being incorporated, they were ex- 
posed to fraud from their officials. Some failed in connection 
with labor exchanges, promoted by Robert Owen, from whose 
teachings cooperation sprang. Articles offered for sale in these 
were priced according to the time spent in making them, at six- 
pence per hour, on the socialistic theory, adopted later by Karl 
Marx, that as labor is the source of all value right prices can be 
stated in the labor time of a workman of average speed. Ar- 
ticles thus priced too low were soon bought up, while by others 
priced too high the labor exchanges were choked.^ 

The Christian Socialists, a small body of philanthropic gen- 
tlemen, setting themselves with noble zeal to solve the problem 

^Most of the Information in this chapter regarding British cooperation Is 
taken from "The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain," by Miss Beatrice 

Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb). 



Cooperative Industry. 69 

of labor, in the terrible depression of 1849, were attracted to the 
idea of cooperative workshops, many of which were then flour- 
ishing under the revolution toward democracy in France, 
though destined soon to collapse there Among these were men 
who became noted, including Charles Kingsley and F. D. Mau- 
rice, clergymen and authors ; Thomas Hughes, J. M. Ludlow, 
and E. V. Neale, able lawyers. Contributing capital and influ- 
ence, they started about a dozen small cooperative shops, 
among tailors, shoemakers, and builders, and assisted other 
shops of the same kind — among printers, bakers, and black- 
smiths. After several years of devoted effort, and loss of cap- 
ital, the philanthropists gave up in despair. With discord from 
the start, and selfish effort by individual members at the expense 
of the group of workers, the shops soon disappeared, or passed 
to single owners or partnerships. In 1852 workmen on strike 
started a number of cooperative shops, which like the others 
soon failed or changed in character. 

Cooperation in Name Only became the characteristic of 
shops that succeeded. Ownership soon fell to one or a few of 
the abler workers, who hired or discharged the others. About 
the same time there began to rise in Lancashire, cotton factories 
built by corporations composed mainly of workingmen. These 
companies, which have continued to increase and flourish down 
to the present day, are called "working class limiteds" ; but 
they differ from other corporations only in having many share- 
holders from the working class, and in allowing, in most cases, 
but one vote to a member, whatever the number of his shares. 
The shareholder's interest as an owner was soon found to be 
different from his interest as a worker, and rules were made to 
take care of the concern. Giving a preference to stockholders' 
families in hiring help was stopped, it being found that such 
help had an influence detrimental to eflicient management. Em- 
ployees owning shares were not allowed to vote for directors, 
since a number of such employees, by means of wire pulling, 
could get into office a superintendent who would neglect the 
company to favor them. Professor Jevons in 1859, investigat- 
ing failures of cooperative cotton mills, observed that they 
could not possibly succeed unless working shareholders were 
made to obey a superintendent who was their servant. The 



70 Getting a Living. 

Oldham cotton operative now prefers to own shares in other 
mills than the one in which he works, in order that he may have 
a right to vote for directors. 

A Long Succession of Failures. Besides "working class lim- 
iteds," which are not counted as cooperative, and which do not 
share profits with employees or treat them better than do other 
corporations, many cooperative shops arose in England after 
1849-53. The failures of that short period having passed from 
view, another wave of productive cooperation spread over the 
country in 1865 and later, during which the trade unions lost 
$300,000 in cooperative machine shops. Of some hundreds 
of cooperative shops known to have existed before 1870, only 
three remained in 1891, when Miss Potter wrote; and there 
had disappeared about a hundred started after 1870. There 
were in active existence in 1891, conducted by producers (ex- 
cluding joint stock companies, and productive works carried on 
by societies of consumers), 74 manufacturing and 5 farming 
societies, doing a yearly business of $2,213,618. But of these 
only eight were self-governing workshops or brotherhoods, on 
the ideal of the Christian Socialists, employing members solely, 
and choosing the manager from themselves ; while of these 
eight four had sales under $5,000 each. In another small class 
of societies the members had bound themselves to, or had had 
imposed on them, an irremovable manager or committee, whom 
they had to obey. One society of building contractors had 179 
working members, but by share-owning and term-of-service 
qualifications only 40 were allowed to vote. A class of 21 so- 
cieties, self-governing but hiring outside labor, was said by 
Miss Potter to consist practically of small masters, sweating 
non-members employed, and not knowing the cooperative 
spirit. In a fourth and final class the bulk of the stock was 
held by outsiders, who controlled as in ordinary corporations ; 
the workers were encouraged or obliged to take in stock a bonus 
allowed them in profit sharing, but were not permitted to act on 
the committee of management. This class included, among 
other prosperous concerns, the noted Hebden Bridge Fustian 
Works, started in 1869, and employing over 300 persons. 

Productive Cooperation in Great Britain To-Day is more 
extensive and prosperous than it was at the time of Miss Pot- 



Cooperative Industry. 71 

ter's survey of it in 189T. Not counting 30 societies engaged 
in farming and dairying, there were in 1901 productive (manu- 
facturing) societies to the number of 136, having 32,434 mem- 
bers, a share and loan capital of $6,595,758, an output for the 
year of $13,988,985, with a profit of $905,612; and paying to 
their 8,007 employees $2,038,667 in wages and salaries, and in 
profit sharing a bonus of $83,713. Productive branches were 
also carried on by the English wholesale society and the Scotch 
wholesale society (described further on), with 14,232 employees 
in production, and an output valued at $20,061,467; and (for 
1900) by 610 local retail societies, with 15,428 employees in 
production, and an output valued at $20,617,155.^ The 30 farm 
and dairy societies in 1901 had 1,480 members, 40 employees, a 
share and loan capital of $57,751, and an output of $214,564. 
The 2 wholesale societies and 83 retail societies farmed 7,593 
acres, with a net profit of $11,790 (included in the figures above 
for production by the wholesale and retail societies). But in 
only a small portion of all this production are the workers self- 
employed, even to the slight extent of profit sharing. The Co- 
operative Year Book for 1899 gave a list of 54 manufacturing 
concerns belonging to a union called the Federated Productive 
Societies, which admits no concern that does not allow "a sub- 
stantial and known share of the profit," as a percentage of 
wages, to employees owning no shares ; and which does not 
give every worker liberty to invest in its shares, *'and so become 
a member entitled to vote on the affairs of the body which em- 
ploys him." It is likely, however, that in practically all of these 
the share-owning employees cannot vote for directors, or that 
in some way the concern is not controlled by its workmen, and 
hence differs but slightly from ordinary corporations.^ 

^Cooperative Union Report, 1902; and Eighth Annual British Labor Re- 
port, 1902. 

^Profit Sharing and Stock Owning the Cooperative Features. Of the 
54 all showed a profit for 1899 but 14, the profit varying from $19 to $22,138, 
and aggregating $175,497; 10 had each a yearly trade above $100,000, 4 of 
these above $215,000, and one of them $332,000, the total trade for all the 
54 being $3,075,665; 28 showed a dividend on wages varying from 2 to 10 
per cent and in amount from $34 to $4,463, the total being $36,555. {U. S. 
Labor Bulletin No. 34, May, 1901.) But not connected with the Federated 
Productive Societies are cooperative concerns that practice profit sharing. 



J2 Getting a Living. 

In the United States productive cooperation has been rare 
and unimportant. Several factories conducted by the Mor- 
mons, in connection with their great cooperative store estab- 
Hshed in 1869 at Salt Lake City, were carried on by the mem- 
bers as consumers until bought up, with the store, by about 800 
of their number as stockholders.^ This store and its factories 
are similar to the large English cooperative stores described 
further on. The Oneida Community, Limited, which in 1900 
had a capital of $750,000, with large factories in Western New 
York, was a communistic society for about thirty years until 
1880, when its property was passed to a corporation, each mem- 
ber being given shares of stock for his previously undivided 
interest. The Amana Community in Iowa (1,800 members) 
has now several long established and prosperous cotton and 
woolen factories employing some hundreds of people ; while the 
Shakers and other similar cooperators have engaged in manu- 
facturing. Aside from these religious communistic societies, 
and from a number of factory enterprises carried on by Mor- 
mon corporations in Utah with some cooperative features, the 
principal case of productive cooperation in America is that of 
the Minneapolis coopers. Of eight shops existing in 1886 four 
survived in 1896, having a total membership of about 260 work- 
ing coopers, and doing an aggregate annual business of about 
$720,000. It seems that since then they have not grown. 
"Outside of these associations, scarcely anything of the kind 
exists in America. The few small cooperative mines in Illinois 
are said by the state mine inspectors to have a bad effect ori 
wages in their neighborhood by their readiness to sell coal at 
any price when trade is dull. The so-called cooperative furni- 
ture factories of Rockford, 111., are really joint stock companies, 
with small shares widely distributed among employees. Dis- 
aster has recently overtaken many of those at Rockford. Where 

For the year 1901 a total of 160 societies paid to 12,706 employees profits to 
the amount of $163,167, which was nearly 5^^ per cent on wages. One of 
these societies was the Scotch wholesale, which paid to its 4,702 productive 
employees profits amounting to $36,022, being three and one-third per cent 
on wages. Ninety-nine others of the 160 were productive departments of 
retail societies, leaving 60 productive societies proper, including n engaged 
in farming. (British Labor Gazette, Nov. 1902.) 
^C. B. Spahr, "America's Working People," 206. 



Cooperative Industry. 73 

every stockholder has an equal vote there is some tendency to 
keep up wages even ruinously, at the expense of profits."^ This 
would be the case with workers owning a couple of shares, to 
w^hom the return from their capital invested would be a small 
matter compared with their wages. In perhaps a hundred in- 
stances during the last forty years, small cooperative shops 
have been started and carried on for a short time by working- 
men in the United States, disappearing by failure, or passing to 
the ownership of one or several of the members. There has 
been some success among wood-workers in St. Louis, and 
among shoe factory operatives in Massachusetts.^ 

^E. W. Berais, U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 6, Sept. 1896. 

^Uniform Failure in American Productive Cooperation. During the 
rapid rise of the Knights of Labor, from 1884 to 1888, "scores of coopera- 
.'tive workshops, coal mines, and factories were started all over the country, 
without any connection with cooperative stores or knowledge of cooperative 
methods elsewhere. N^jost^of these experiments failed. The few successful 
ones were transformed into joint stock or private enterprises." ''Coopera- 
tion among the trade unions has almost no permanent success, although it 
has sometimes proved a temporary resource while men were on a strike. 
Mr. Henry White, secretary of the United Garment Workers, writes that 
the many cooperative efforts in his trade have resulted in failure because 
of disagreement respecting the management and the selection of officials, 
and because the attempt was made to pay higher wages and exact less work 
than in the other shops. Mr. Henry Weissmann, head of the bakers and 
confectioners, writes: 'We have had cooperation in Brooklyn, Boston, 
Baltimore, and Philadelphia — all unsuccessful. I t is la c k of educati on and 
business qualifications, and more especially the latter, that produced these 
failures.'" ( lLS7~Labof~ButtFtTrr^o.—&r Sept. 1896.) Though now and 
then cooperative shops are still started by men idle on strike, the above 
quotations from Prof. Bemis as to productive cooperation are perhaps 
true of the present time. 

On the Continent of Europe. In the exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 
1900, France had a list of no productive societies, many of them success- 
ful, and some of them old and well established. "Cooperative production 
has not had any striking success in Germany, according to Dr. Albrecht. A 
great many societies have dissolved after a short existence, and of the 193 
reported as now alive, very few are properly organizations of workmen." 
(N. P. Gilman, U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 34.) As no other country is par- 
ticularly mentioned by Prof. Gilman in connection with cooperative pro- 
duction, or by other writers on the subject, it is unlikely that outside of 
Great Britain, France, and Germany this form of cooperation exists any- 
where in the world to a noteworthy extent, 



74 Getting a Living. 

Distributive Cooperation, conducted by consumers to sup- 
ply themselves, first attained permanent success in the store 
established in 1844 bythe famous Rochdale Pioneers. Starting 
with a capital of £28, and a trade of £2 a week, on a back way 
called Toad Street, the store being kept open two nights a week 
by the 28 members taking turns, these Lancashire workingmen 
discovered by experience a few simple principles on which, it is 
believed by some acute thinkers, industrial society will gradually 
be transformed. The movement soon spread through the north 
of England, where the numerous working class were generally 
becoming united into trade unions, and were eager to know and 
to advance their interests. So steady has been the growth of 
this form of cooperation in Great Britain that in this brief ac- 
count it is only needful to give the immense aggregates it 
reaches to-day.^ 

^The Vast Business of British Distributive Societies. The following 
figures, for the year 1901, are taken from the report of the Thirty-fourth 
Annual Cooperative Congress. Number of cooperative societies of all 
kinds 1,648 (1,604 reporting) ; members, 1,919,555 — an increase of 91,902 
over the total for 1900, and of a full million over the total for 1890; share 
capital, $119,617,131; sales for the year, $397,465,132; profits, $44,223,142; 
investments, including buildings, farms, and factories, $75,708,314. Of these 
1,648 societies, 1,462 conduct local retail stores, with 1,793,770 of the mem- 
bers, $256,419,310 of the sales, and $40,169,241 of the profits; 136 are pro- 
ductive and 30 agricultural — described above; 8 are supply associations^ 
described below; 10 are special societies; and 2 are wholesale societies. 
The English wholesale society has 1,092 members, each member being a co- 
operative society; its sales for the year in its distributive business (produc- 
tive business given above) were $72,750,032; and its net profit from both 
kinds of business was $1,625,509. The Scotch wholesale society has a mem- 
bership of 287 societies; its distributive sales were $20,541,633 ; its net profit 
from both kinds of business was $1,188,692. 

Many Kinds of Business Carried On. The English wholesale has 12 
productive departments and the Scotch 8, employing together in their 
factories 14,232 people, and manufacturing shoes, cloth, clothing, furniture, 
flour, crackers, soap, etc., for their own trade exclusively. In distributive 
trade these two societies have 3,237 employees, and the retail societies have 
42,954. The largest local society is that of Leeds, which lias 48,960 mem- 
bers, a share capital of $3,606,800, and had annual sales in looi of $7,166,104. 
To supply their own trade, some of the local societies carry on, singly or 
united with additional societies for the purpose, flour mills, bakeries, slaugh- 
ter houses, etc., own and rent dwellings to members, and erect their own 
buildings. The English wholesale society conducts a bank, owns five ships, 



Cooperative Industry. 75 

Enduring Elements of Success, as proved by experience in 
Europe, are unquestionably possessed by cooperative stores. In 
the early period of the movement, as at present in some places, 

and has purchasing warehouses in Canada and Australia. In some British 
cities a majority of the people are cooperators, conducting most of the city's 
retail business. A sixth of the British population, counting members' fam- 
ilies, is now connected with cooperative societies. The supply associations 
are distinctive in that their stock is owned by a restricted number, who get 
the profits as in ordinary corporations, instead of being owned by all the 
customers, each of whom is or may be a member. 

On the Continent. France, in 1899, had 1,489 cooperative stores, 
Germany 1,373, Austria 712, Russia 307, and Denmark 837. In Belgium, 
as in industrial Europe generally, distributive cooperation is flourishing, 
there being in Brussels a society which for extent and variety of business 
compares with the society of Leeds. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 34.) This 
Brussels society has 20 branch stores, 12 doctors and several dentists, and 
spends $10,000 yearly in caring for sick members. Its people's palace, 
built in 1896 at a cost of $240,000, contains a large library, and is used as 
the headquarters of many trade unions. The Ghent society provides old 
age pensions, and spends largely in the socialistic propaganda, supporting 
daily newspapers and many lectures. 

In the United States the History of Cooperative Stores is mainly 
a record of failure, though not to the same extent as the history of co- 
operative manufacturing. Between 1847 and 1859 "796 of these union 
stores were started, and 350 of them, mostly in New England, reported in 
1857 a capital of $291,000 and an annual trade of $2,000,000. Limiting 
dividends and selling a little above cost, these stores either failed, or were 
transformed into private enterprises." The next important effort was that 
of the farmers' society called the Patrons of Husbandry, whose grange 
stores, started in 1866, "seem to have followed the methods of the union 
stores, and to have met a similar fate." 

The Next Wave of Cooperative Enthusiasm was fostered by the 
Sovereigns of Industry, between 1874 and 1880, who for two years kept 
two paid lecturers in the field to instruct the people in cooperation. In 
1877 this society had 94 councils, mostly in the Northeast, which reported 
an average membership of 77, average capital in stores $884, and total 
trade of $1,089,372. Of these stores about a dozen remained in 1896. In 
another wave many cooperative stores were started by farmers in the 
South from i886 to 1892, which soon disappeared in failure. In 1896 
Prof. Bemis, from whose article in U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 6 this infor- 
mation is taken, found 26 cooperative stores in New England, with 10,692 
members ; and 23 stores elsewhere, mostly in New Jersey, Kansas, and 
California, with 6,115 members. There were then probably 20 other 
cooperative stores from which no report was obtained. Of the New 
England stores, 20 had a total trade of $1,174,000, or $114 per member; 



']6 Getting a Living. 

gain to members was secured by selling for cash only, thus 
avoiding losses and hence lowering prices, and also by giving 
strict attention to quality of goods — advantages not now to be 
possessed by cooperators in towns having merchants of enter- 
prise. But the main principle of strength in the Rochdale plan, 
which prevails in Great Britain, and has generally been followed 
by the successful stores in other countries, is the division of net 
profits each year as a percentage on each customer's total pur- 
chases, after paying ordinary interest on share capital — 3^ to 
5 per cent in England, and 5 to 7 per cent in America.^ This 

21 outside of New England had a trade of $1,198,000, or $219 per member, 
not including the great store at Salt Lake City. There were also in 1896, 
in 32 states, 135 labor exchanges, with about 6,000 members. For articles 
deposited in these exchanges, a transferable check was given, redeemable 
in articles on hand, which were sold also for money at current prices. 
Nothing concerning these exchanges seems to have appeared for several 
years in periodicals that are usually eager to gather information of such 
enterprises. 

Cooperative Stores in the United States To-Day are more numerous 
than in 1896 — in fact, in some sections another wave of cooperation seems 
to be at its crest. By reports apparently reliable, California has now 
more than 60 local cooperative stores, which carry on their own wholesale 
store in San Francisco; Iowa has 55 stores, and Kansas 32; while in 
nearly every Mormon town in Utah and Wyoming, perhaps twoscore or 
more, the people have long supplied themselves through cooperative stores, 
engaging also at some places in production, but in this generally by means 
of corporations not wholly cooperative. (The World's Work of December, 
1902, contains an account of Mormon cooperation — also Harper's for April, 
1903.) 

^The Rochdale Plan of Cooperation. An entrance fee of one shilling 
gives the right to the dividend on purchases, and also in some societies 
to the right to vote for directors, — that is, to full membership. In other 
societies the right to vote is withheld until sufficient dividends accumulate 
to buy a one-pound share. In America membership is granted in some 
cases with one five-dollar share, but in others with not less than five such 
shares. Shares are usually bought back at par by the society from persons 
withdrawing. The number of shares one can hold is usually limited to 
100, sometimes to 40; while a member has but one vote, without regard 
to the number of his shares, and no proxy voting is allowed. These rules 
prevent ownership of a prosperous store from falling into the hands of a 
few persons seeking profits. Usually in America stockholders receive on 
their purchases a dividend twice as large as that allowed to other 
customers. In 1895 the average dividend in New England stores was 
6.8 per cent. In Great Britain that year only 1,3 per cent of members 



Cooperative Industry. yy 

dividend on purchases holds trade securely if reasonably good 
values are offered. Regular market prices are charged, to avoid 
loss by miscalculating, and to avoid arousing antagonism from 
merchants, who by selling some staple articles at cost may draw 
away the less zealous cooperators. Where the cooperative 
store is vigorous, efforts by merchants to hold custom makes 
sometimes the regular prices of the town somewhat low. 

Especially Favorable Conditions in Great Britain for Dis- 
tributive Cooperation include the following. First, the Brit- 
ish workingman, gaining knowledge and capability from active 
trade unionism, and rising in ambition, finds in the cooperative 
society his best or only chance to invest his small savings in a 
business he can help to manage, and the only way in his house- 
hold purchases to avoid contributing to capitalistic profits, which 
are obnoxious in proportion to the degree of socialism he has 
imbibed. As low wages, and the crowded condition of in- 
dustry, permit only those of exceptional ability or good fortune 
to rise above the working class, many left in it are capable of 
serving well on cooperative boards. This is a reason, in con- 
nection with longer experience, why the British trade unions 
have been managed more ably and successfully than the Amer- 
ican. Second, the British movement is strengthened by its per- 
fected organization, by its enthusiastic propaganda, and by the 
momentum of magnificent success. From the first the societies 

received as low as 5 per cent or less, while 54 per cent of members 
received from 10 to 15 per cent, and 30 per cent of members received 
over 15 per cent. Present members have the right but no desire to exclude 
new ones, since the larger the trade the more cheaply the store can buy at 
wholesale, the better the variety it can carry, and the lower its percentage 
of fixed costs in rent and salaries. Well managed British stores get as 
members in some towns the majority of the population. Under these 
conditions the stock cannot rise above par, nor fall below it unless the store 
is failing. The Rochdale plan preserves complete democracy, new mem- 
bers being admitted without limit, and the last member having as much 
power in voting as the first. Very different are societies not conducted on 
the Rochdale plan. The Civil Service Supply Association, founded in 
1867 by London post-office officials, had 40,000 customers by 1891, but only 
5,000 shareholders, owning stock worth £125 a share, on which only half a 
pound had been paid in. It has only good qualities and low prices with 
which to attract trade, as department stores do, not paying dividends on 
purchases. 



78 Getting a Living. 

have usually devoted a portion of profits to spreading the prin- 
ciples of cooperation, not only locally, to gain members for the 
store, but also generally, in order to advance the cause. A 
great national cooperative congress is held annually, of v^hich 
most of the societies are members — also an international con- 
gress with Continental cooperators. In this way, and by many 
tracts, periodicals, books, and elaborate statistical reports, with 
emulation among store managers in efforts at achievement, the 
best cooperative methods are worked out and disseminated, and 
new societies aided to reach success. The Cooperative News, of 
Manchester, owned by shareholding societies, has a circulation 
of more than 50,000. As a means of uplifting the working 
class, millions of them enter into cooperation with an almost 
religious zeal, and also many philanthropic persons of influence. 
Mr. Holyoake, Mr. Neale, and Mr. Ludlow have labored for it 
a full half century. It has the active sympathy of statesmen, 
economists, reformers, and authors. The English and the Scotch 
wholesale societies, in which the local stores, the trade unions, 
and the mutual benefit societies are financially united, supply 
goods in the most favorable way, selling to cooperative stores 
only, returning to them a percentage of profit on their pur- 
chases, and protecting them from boycott, sometimes attempted 
by local merchants, who might turn the regular wholesalers 
against the cooperators. 

American Conditions Are Different. The rise of trade 
unionism, and of ambitious purpose among working people, is 
giving cooperation similar success in Continental Europe. But 
in America the advantage of membership in a cooperative store 
has been far less important. First, larger earnings here, and 
rapid growth of the country, have enabled capable workmen to 
rise with some certainty to better positions, or to engage in inde- 
pendent business — making their energy too valuable to devote 
to cooperation that mainly benefits others. Second, intensity 
of regular labor leaves too little strength for cooperative meet- 
ings at night designed for business, not for recreation. Work- 
ingmen here can better afford to pay the merchant in profits 
than to do his work themselves. The high dividends (stated 
above) of British cooperative societies are largely due to sav- 
ing of delivery expenses, members carrying goods home instead 



Cooperative Industry. 79 

of having them sent. Third, for the consumption of highly 
paid men in America the varied stock of goods required involves 
too much capital for cooperators, and too much mercantile skill 
for managers hired at rather low salaries in order to make divi- 
dends. In the intense energy exerted in American business, 
merchants have generally offered too much in attractive goods 
and low prices to be competed with by any persons willing to 
serve for less than the merchant's profits. To many wage work- 
ers the saving of a few cents in price is too small to make co- 
operation worthy of their attention, and often involves really a 
loss, in view of the choice given up. The common practice 
among merchants of giving trading stamps, redeemable in pic- 
tures or furniture, has no effect on careful buyers unless the 
goods bought and the prices are as desirable as can be found. 
Fourth, very few have felt in America that cooperative stores 
are needed to educate and uplift the working class. From their 
higher plane here, most of them can rise better otherwise. 
General opinion has been rather unfavorable to cooperation, 
regarding it as of doubtful soundness. 

But Cooperation in America Has its Field. In building 
and loan associations, made safe by mortgages, its success has 
been marked — more so than in Europe, where wages are gener- 
ally too low, and real estate too high, to admit of owning homes ; 
though similar societies in Germany and Italy have been of im- 
mense benefit in lending to farmers.^ Cooperative fire insur- 
ance, paying losses from assessments, has been successful in 
many American states among farmers when limited to a single 

^The Usefulness of Building and Loan Associations, also called coop- 
erative banks, is very great. Their high rate of interest or profit paid 
to members, not otherwise to be obtained, induces many to save. Members 
get experience in handling money and property. Borrowing members pay 
high interest on loans, but the easy payments enable many to get homes who 
could not do so otherwise. By largely increasing the number of those who 
save and have property-, these associations develop sound citizenship, adding 
stability to society, and checking destructive political tendencies. For this 
reason they are opposed in Germany by the socialists, who are loth to see 
wage workers contented and owning property, and hence interested in pre- 
serving the present order of society, but want them to be discontented and 
revolutionary, that they may be led to seek their welfare from a transfer 
of all capital and business to the government, controlled by the masses 
under a visionary extreme of equality. 



8o Getting a Living, 

county, but a disastrous failure as a rule (from agents' ex- 
penses, difficulty of oversight, and cost of collections) when, 
extended over a wider area. Also, to a man of property, the 
small sum saved in cost of insurance is a trifle compared with 
his large (sometimes unlimited) liability for the company's 
losses. In not a few communities, after collapse of a system 
of cooperative fire insurance, the disposition has been for each 
to confine himself to his own occupation, and to leave fire insur- 
ance to those making a business of it, and supplying a kind of 
insurance that insures. Assessment life insurance, in risks now 
reaching hundreds of millions, through scores of fraternal or- 
ders, has doubtless brought good net results to the people. Its 
lack of safety, new orders frequently appearing and disappear- 
ing, has probably been overbalanced by its promotion of fra- 
ternity, by its education of the people in organizing and in at- 
tending to business, and by its reaching of many people who 
would not otherwise have taken life insurance at all. 

Highly Successful Cooperation Among Farmers. Coop- 
erative marketing of fruit in California, New Jersey, Ohio,, 
and Georgia, cooperative grain elevators in Kansas, and co- 
operative creameries and rural telephone systems in a number 
of states — have attained solid success, and will doubtless in- 
crease largely. In each of these four kinds of service, co- 
operation seems to have special strength, in the fact that with- 
out it the farmers are often exposed to monopoly, from com- 
bination of the few buyers as to prices, or from difficulty of 
reaching competing creameries or elevators.^ On account of 

^Varieties of Successful Cooperation. At Paris in 1900 the statistics 
of codperation in Germany showed 10,858 credit societies for lending to 
farmers and others on the building and loan plan, 244 building societies, 
and 1,193 societies for buying farm supplies. In the latter the Grangers 
and the Farmers' Alliance have had considerable success in America, ob- 
taining discounts by buying large quantities collectively. Holland reported 
at Paris 540 of these farm supply societies, 485 cooperative creameries, a 
few factories for making potato starch, preserves, and beet sugar, and a 
variety of farm insurance societies. Denmark reported 1,052 cooperative 
creameries, 25 lard factories, and 400 branches of a society for exporting 
eggs. Cooperation is also largely applied in Denmark to buying foodstuffs, 
seeds, and fertilizers. "It is not a rare thing to see a Danish peasant a 
member of ten cooperative societies, whose administration is for the most 
part gratuitous on the part of the members." (Gilman.) Ireland reported 



Cooperative Industry. 8 1 

individual helplessness in the great distances and unfavorable 
climate of the Rocky Mountain region, men there have been 
quite generally drawn by decided gain into cooperation in mar- 
keting and irrigating, the Mormons having also been drawn 
together by their religion. Moreover, under the recent change 
to cooperation of an established wholesale business in Toledo 
and Chicago (the Cooperating Merchants' Company), operat- 
ing somewhat on the English wholesale plan, granges and local 
cooperative stores or buying societies, the latter of which are 
now increasing among farmers in America, can profitably mar- 
ket their produce and buy staple supplies. In a compact mining 
settlement too, if public interest is aroused, and good managers 
are found, a cooperative store may easily become the largest in 
town, and the best place for all to buy. The bulk of the popu- 
lation being supported by mines not dependent upon local mar- 
ket, competing merchants have a weaker claim on patronage 
than in towns where more of the people live on the trade of one 
another. Wherever, for any reason, a cooperative society can 
succeed without too much effort, it is probably a benefit to the 
community. The customary use of so much capital and skill 
in mere merchandising is at best a necessary evil, to be avoided 
as far as possible. By doing without the services of merchants, 
the buyer may save their profit ; and turning them from selling 
things to making things increases and cheapens society's flow 
of supplies. 

Is the Saving Always Real? Undoubtedly it is real to the 
British workman. The energy he gives to cooperation would 
yield in probably no other way so much gain, either in money 
or in valuable experience. It seems to be fully as real with 
farmers, in the marketing and buying mentioned. What they 
seem to need, above all else, is up-to-date knowledge of mar- 
kets — of what to produce, how to grow it best, and how to get 
the most for it. When shipping beyond the local town they 
are not competitors of one another ; self-interest, in the matter 

164 cooperative creameries, but there, as in Holland, other kinds of selling 
societies had not had the success attained in Denmark, though there were of 
the latter 102 in Ireland and 12 in England. Of the English stores 75 car- 
ried on farming to supply their trade, but there were only 3 farms carried 
on by workers in cooperative production. 
6 



82 Getting a Living. 

of freights and information, then draws them together. When 
united, each gets full benefit of the knowledge of the shrewdest, 
and for a salary easily borne a large society may sometimes get 
the services of an expert. Marketing crops and buying prin- 
cipal supplies can be combined. In no other way, perhaps, 
would the energy thus spent by the average farmer yield him 
so much. The personal association is a valuable feature, 
affording needed pleasure to persons generally alone at their 
work, and developing capabilities of leadership and of self- 
government. The ablest farmer, for helping his neighbors by 
carrying cooperation to success, may be rewarded, not only 
with esteem and prestige, and with self-development not other- 
wise attainable, but also with a considerable saving of money 
over the best results he could reach for himself alone. 

Is Cooperative Production Fatally Defective? With some 
confidence one may answer yes. In the long record of failure, 
outlined in the preceding pages, the only reliable means of 
success yet discovered, it seems, is to give up cooperation — 
that is, to give up control of the concern by its workers, allow- 
ing to them little or no more voice than to outsiders in the 
matter of wages or management, and making them subject to 
discharge as ordinary employees. This has been the case, as 
shown by Miss Potter, with practically all of the British pro- 
ducing societies that have succeeded.^ Their system of sharing 
profits with workers is followed by many a private employer 
also ; while in those cases in which a loss has been partly thrown 
on wages the workers have usually been harmed. As was 
claimed recently by some north of England fishermen, among 
whom the pay of men has long been determined to some extent 
by the catch (the usual rule in whale fishing), working people 
cannot afford to take the risks of business. Their pay is too 
near the line of suffering from want to admit of their taking 

'In the consuming societies also, salaried men and employees, who be- 
come members as buyers of goods, are not allowed to vote for the managing 
committee. Likewise in Belgium, where distributive societies carry on a 
variety of production with solid success, they have learned that in favoring 
the worker they cannot go further than the ordinary individual or corpo- 
rate employer whose self-interest is far-sighted. (J. G. Brooks, "The Social 
Unrest.") 



Cooperative Industry. 83 

chances. If there have been cases of cooperative production 
continuing to succeed without depriving the workers of control, 
it would doubtless be found that for some reason their control 
was not exercised. Where success comes, as it often has for a 
time, from the accident of securing an able manager, the will 
of the workers is in a measure subjected by his strong person- 
ality.^ In such cooperative concerns as the great ironware 
factories of M. Godin, at Guise in France, and the house 
decorating business of M. Leclaire in Paris, a well established 
business was gradually transferred by a philanthropic employer 
to his workmen, prepared for the change by many years of 
special training, having able managers in charge to carry out 
the benefactor's intentions, and having various safeguarding 
conditions that for generations might relieve the workmen from 
being thrown on their own resources. Control by workmen 
seems here to be merely nominal. In other cases of success 
an employer was perhaps but slightly needed. This might be 

^Success in Cooperation from the Ability of One Man. The notably 
successful cooperative store in Lewiston, Maine, which has added a num- 
ber of productive branches to supply its trade, consists mainly of a well 
established department store turned over in 1900 to the society by Mr. Brad- 
ford Peck, an able merchant, whose zeal in the cause has been inducing him 
to give free to the enterprise almost his entire time, besides property worth 
$25,000. Its business is described in The Arena of Dec. 1901, and Dec. 
1902, by Rev. Hiram Vrooman, a writer who expects cooperation to quickly 
revolutionize society. His oversight of many natural conditions making 
such changes impossible is similar to that of socialistic writers in general. 
The great success of the varied cooperative store business at Trenton and 
Independence, Mo., in 1 901-2, seems also to be due mainly to the zeal of one 
man, another Mr. Vrooman. 

Cooperative Success from Religious Power and Obedience. The uni- 
versal success of cooperation among the Mormons arose not only from their 
isolation and their helplessness as individuals, but also from several ele- 
ments that are more objectionable. One of these was the ignorance and 
poverty of Europeans won to Mormonism by promises of material comforts. 
Another was the unwholesome power (shown in tithes and in unquestioning 
obedience) that the Mormon officials gained over their credulous people 
through a deeply laid system of training in church loyalty. But here too, 
despite the brotherhood of religion, the cooperative concerns have generally 
been bought up by profit-seeking stockholders. The Mormon church and 
its officials, besides large power over the people, have also large wealth, 
controlling many semi-cooperative corporations. {Harper's, April, 1903.) 



84 Getting a Living. 

so in a small shop carried on by a few ; and was probably true 
to some extent with the Minneapolis coopers, starting before 
the introduction of much machinery, using a simple and cheap 
raw material, and supplying a local market of favorably dis- 
posed millers. The fifty Rochester polishers who during the 
last year and a half have been very successful as cooperators — 
their corporation starting with 34 members, soon reduced to 21 
— leased their previous employer's equipment, thus obviating 
the need of capital, and had from the first a guaranteed pat- 
ronage in doing for him by contract the work they had 
previously done for wages. 

Lack of Capital and of Ability will generally prevent the 
starting of really cooperative production in this age of costly 
machinery and complex business. The few who have the 
aptitude and the opportunity to acquire the high ability neces- 
sary can save or borrow the capital, and would have no reason 
to unite with workingmen in cooperation except to help them 
philanthropically. The workingman fitted for cooperation, the 
man sufificiently clear-headed to discern how essential is the 
employer's function, and that his large reward is naturally fixed 
by the demand for and supply of his ability, discerns also that 
in cooperation he himself cannot justly or effectually demand 
more as wages than his labor is worth in the market, wirh a 
share of profit according to the capital he has put in. These 
two payments to him are thus no larger than he obtains in busi- 
ness not cooperative. In those surviving trades in which small 
capital can be made to answer, a few workers united can yet 
start in business ; but a desire by them for cooperation that is 
real, for a shop of some size governed by all its workers with 
any approach to equality, would generally be conclusive evi- 
dence of business incompetence. Where there are from two to 
four workmen of about equal ability, especially when the ability 
is of different kinds, a partnership may be desirable, which is 
an old and proved form of cooperation. One or more of 
inferior ability may be taken into the firm at first for the sake 
of their capital. But later on, when their capital is not needed, 
and their connection does not secure valuable trade, they can 
scarcely complain if the partners having higher ability demand 
their retirement from the firm. When there are no longer any 



Cooperative Industry. 85 

obligations of kindliness, to retain as a partner a man who is 
worth no more to the business than an employee, is to give him 
free the excess he receives as profits over the sum of the interest 
on his capital and over the wages for which such a man could 
be hired. Business success is usually difficult enough without 
dead weights. TobeJust_and.d^rab]^^ 
composed of men whose work is equally valua ble, or who first 
receive salaries graded to value of work done, with remainder 
of profit divided according to each one's share of the capital. 
Sound Cooperation in Ordinary Corporations. The facts 
that equality in value of services is seldom the case with three 
or four partners, and that liability for and dijEficulty of control- 
ling one another makes partnership more undesirable as 
industries increase in size and complexity, indicate the necessity 
of strong government in a business having many owners. Such 
government is secured in the corporation. In it the relation 
of working owners to one another is made just by salaries or 
wages graded to value of labor performed ; but as the buyer of 
labor, or of anything else, cannot be safely controlled by the 
seller of it, it was found necessary in England to take away the 
votes of workers when they hold many of a concern's shares. 
In a fair bargain each party must be independent. A worker 
is then as much a hireling of a corporation he partly owns as 
he would be if working for another concern. It is as a capi- 
talist that the manager must act, or in dealings with workmen 
the owners will not be represented at all. To object to the 
manager's so acting would be the same in principle as to be 
offended because one as a customer may not go behind the 
counter and weigh goods for himself. To keep undesirable 
employees because as cooperators they had helped to start a 
factory might endanger its success, and possibly sacrifice the 
good workers to help the poor ones. In the ordinary corpora- 
tion, therefore, controlled by capitalists but in which employees 
may buy shares, cooperation betAveen capital and labor in an 
industry seems to be carried as far as human nature will permit. 
The voting and controlling owners may hold each but a few 
shares, and be common workmen in other factories, but never- 
theless it must be as capitalists that they manage their property. 
If they managed it for the immediate interest of the employees, 



86 Getting a Living. 

they would soon have no factory from failure, and rightly, 
since they would then be trying to serve their men instead of 
serving society, whose demand and purchasing power give 
to goods and property their value, and give rise to division of 
occupations instead of barbarous production by each man for 
himself.^ 

Cooperation as the Way to Socialism. Instead of clinging 
to the old ideal of workmen self-employed, which, in the passing 
away of small shops, a party of philanthropic Englishmen, 
following the Christian Socialists, still try to realize in the so- 
called labor copartnership of those cooperative factories that 
share profits with employees — Miss Potter and other philosoph- 
ical thinkers have discovered, in the strong and rapid growth 
of cooperation among consumers, what is probably nothing 
less than a practicable way of reaching a large measure of 
socialism. The ideal of the latter is not to attempt to set up 

^The Necessity of Wage Slavery. A multi-millionaire owning a ma- 
jority of a large corporation's stock could not afford — for the sake of his 
capital invested, saying nothing of justice to other stockholders — to choose 
himself as its high-salaried president if another could be chosen who would 
attain better results from the business. There is nothing wrong in the fact 
that the interests of capital and those of labor are opposed. To be natural, 
and to perform his duty in the bargaining, each must try to get what he 
considers his just share of the product to be divided. Aside from fraud 
and brow-beating, the interests of the other will be taken care of by himself. 
If the worker is not able to do this, the duty of society is to teach him how 
and make him able, protecting the weak by factory laws, but not relieving 
them from bargaining, an exercise that is essential to character of any 
strength, and of which all are supposed to become capable except children 
and imbeciles. The socialist's "wage slavery," to the extent of having to 
deliver what one sells, is universal, and can never be escaped except by 
abandoning exchange, as in a family of children, and as did Robinson 
Crusoe, producing for his own consumption alone, and being a slave to 
nature in storms and seasons. In every bargain each party's freedom to 
judge what he will do must be absolute, and to his contract, if he has 
property, he must be held by law, or there will be exploitation and robbery 
indeed. Any sale of services involves wage slavery. The high-salaried 
public officials are wage slaves, held to performance of duty by fear of 
impeachment or of the disgrace of failure, and discharged without compunc- 
tion at the end of the time of contract. One cannot sell his services and 
keep them too. The workers would not hire themselves, by any means, 
under any socialism capable of raising the second crop and keeping the 
people alive for two years, but would be forced to obedience by authority. 



Cooperative Industry. 87 

workers somewhat artificially as self-employed profit makers, 
but on the contrary, to gradually bring as many people as 
possible to the position of salaried employees, not hired by 
profit-making capitalists, but by profit-saving consumers. In 
this direction cooperation certainly presents great possibilities. 
From conducting the local store, holding customers by retain- 
ing to them all profits above the light expenses necessary, the 
British cooperators have carried their business on the same 
principles to the extensive wholesaling and manufacturing of 
the two general societies, and seem to be limited, in performing 
new lines of service, only to what the total membership can 
consume, with whom alone do the two wholesale societies deal.^ 
From all this cooperative business, the sales amounting to 
$400,000,000 a year, profit has been eliminated. After paying 
interest on capital at the current rate, the balance is returned 
to buyers in dividends on purchases.^ There is complete reali- 
zation of the reasonable socialistic ideal. Future members, 
imlimited in number, come in on full equality, paying no trib- 
ute to a restricted body of previous members who have monopo- 
lized ownership, as in the cases of land rents, and of high 
profits to successful businesses. Hence, the question of un- 
earned increment of value from growth of society does not 
arise, nor does that of the increment earned by the labor and 
risk of previous members, whose service to posterity in this 
respect (in view of the current profits they receive, and of ab- 

^' * The Evil Magic of Profit Making. ' ' One reason for not selling to out- 
side merchants is that to admit them thus to the good wholesale values 
offered would be favoring the rivals of the cooperative retail stores, of 
which the wholesale society consists. Another is that selling to dealers not 
sharing in management of the wholesale society would undermine cooper- 
ation's democratic constitution, to which is due its educational and commer- 
cial success. A third reason is that dealings with outside merchants, by 
introducing among the wholesale society's officials "the evil magic of profit 
making," would tend to close the movement to new shareholders, as in the 
case of the supply associations, instead of the present eagerness to win the 
whole nation into its benefits. But the retail stores, though drawn to the 
wholesale society by its dividend on purchases, are free to buy elsewhere, 
and do so to a large extent. 

'By that great majority of societies which do not share profits with 
employees, this fact is offered as justification, since as buyers these employees 
share in the profits equitably with all others. 



88 Getting a Living. 

sence of the cost there is in carrying the accruing value of 
shares that rise) is small where the movement is strong. For 
the benefits of sharing the ownership, profits, and high-quality 
goods of a vast and admirably established business, the return 
from new members is the aid their trade gives in building it up 
further for the next generation. Those who start new societies 
bear some risk, many hundreds of stores having failed in Eng- 
land; but if a store project is supported by enough people to 
make it a good venture, the money loss of individuals is small 
in case of failure. In 1901 the number of societies dissolved 
was 65, of which 9 were productive. 

Training for Municipal Ownership. Not only does the 
growth of the cooperative movement, this "state within a 
state," permit the indefinite adding of new lines of manufactur- 
ing, but it trains millions of cooperators in capacity for collect- 
ive management and self-government. As a rule, cooperation 
flourishes in Great Britain where the people have had success- 
ful experience in trade unions and friendly societies, but does 
not rise in communities that have known little of associated 
effort. Highly significant is the connection between this train- 
ing and public ownership of street cars, railroads, and the many 
kinds of municipal service believed by economists to be wise as 
soon as voters are sufficiently honest, intelligent, and public- 
spirited. This gradual kind of socialism is to be welcomed. 
But to establish it to last, voters must so relax partisanship as 
to hold officials to duty ; and workers must become less willing 
to exact politically for public work higher pay than the same 
service would sell for in the market, by whose offers alone is 
value to be determined. Such socialism, which promises im- 
mense possibilities of good in the future, requires a standard 
of ability and honesty as far above that now prevailing in pri- 
vate competitive business, as the standard required by the latter 
is above that which prevailed under the socialism of tribal times. 

Does ''the Cooperative Man" Spend Himself for Society 
Wisely? This name is given to store managers and other sal- 
aried men who serve cooperative societies for less pay than 
they might get elsewhere, being moved by ''the cooperative 
spirit" of brotherhood, and of desire to relieve society from the 
necessity of paying tribute to the profit maker. There is little 



Cooperative Industry. 89 

occasion to apply the term to workers for wages, since the 
danger of lowering rates of pay here is guarded against by 
trade unions, whose strong influence in the societies, together 
with the brotherly desire to help the lower class, keeps co- 
operative wages at the highest level, and deters the stores from 
buying sweatshop goods. But aside from writers and propa- 
gandists in a cause, whose reward must generally come in honor 
and satisfaction rather than in money, it seems unsound and 
unnecessary, if cooperation rests on solid principles, that while 
all others concerned contribute nothing of money value, a few 
salaried men must give outright the large additional sums they 
refrain from getting by not going to other employers, or by 
not engaging in business for themselves. The spirit of these 
salaried men in doing thus is praiseworthy, but is this true of 
the gaining by the mass of cooperators from the salaried men's 
unselfishness? If there is giving to be done to help the cause, 
why not pay market salaries and lay the tax on all by lowering 
the dividends? 

Lowering Profits and Salaries by Making Ability Less 
Rare would seem, on the contrary, to be just to all, and to be 
practicable where spread of ability is not balanced by increase of 
business complexity. So far as the task of managers in the 
wholesale societies and the stores is made easier by the effect of 
the dividend on purchase to hold trade, lower ability will answer, 
for which lower pay is just. The occasional service of nominally 
paid boards may be sufficiently rewarded by the satisfaction and 
honor of benefiting the public. But there seems to be no sound 
reason why a manager should not get all the market value of 
his service, as a skilled mechanic in a union exacts all to be ob- 
tained in wages and favorable conditions — the former giving 
what money and influence he can afford to movements that 
teach people how to care for themselves, as the latter gives to- 
ward the expense of unionizing workers in the grades below 
him. Yet the fact that there are no trade secrets in cooperation,, 
the knowledge gained by managers being given freely to sub- 
ordinates and the public in reports and addresses, may largely 
increase the number of men able to conduct stores, reducing 
market salaries and merchandising profits. Ownership of 
cotton factory stock by many Lancashire operatives, giving 



90 Getting a Living. 

them access to prices and profits, and other inside information, 
is said to have fitted many of them for management, and thus 
to have lowered the salaries of superintendents. As Mr. Hob- 
son points out,^ increased public education, and especially the 
saving to the people of monopoly profits by means of municipal 
ownership, inheritance taxes, etc., will enable more young men 
to attain that ability by whose scarcity a noted surgeon now 
obtains enormous fees, lowering these fees also by diminishing 
the absurdly rich class who are willing to pay them. To avoid 
paying over great incomes to a few, society is interested in get- 
ting rid of monopolies of personal ability, as well as monopolies 
of industrial trusts. Enabling many more people to attain abil- 
ity will not only make salaries and profits more obviously rea- 
sonable, but by increasing output of goods and services will 
give all more to enjoy, and more with which to buy of one an- 
other. But this interest of society reaches also the cases in 
which a trade union tries to get monopoly wages by keeping 
men out of its trade. Nature has made natural capacity scarce 
enough to insure it a proper reward, whether it be that of the 
skilled mechanic or that of the eminent practitioner in a pro- 
fession. Effort to make it scarcer artificially is imposition on 
the men shut out, and on the public overcharged. 

Ought Cooperation to be Encouraged in America. Pro- 
ductive cooperation, by a self-governed body of workers larger 
than an ordinary partnership, may as well be dismissed as im- 
possible. Associations of farmers, for selling products and 
buying supplies at wholesale, are doubtless very useful where 
the individual's means of acting for himself alone can thus be 
improved beyond the trouble and cost of organization. This is 
probably the case over a wide field. Clubs and associations for 
mutual information and protection are useful in all occupations. 
A number of people apparently find a net saving in the discount 
to members given by societies for buying books and other things 
at wholesale. Rochdale stores are doubtless a benefit wherever 
the values of regular merchants can be noticeably improved 
upon, and a considerable number, with profit to themselves indi- 
vidually, can unite loyally and intelligently as cooperators. 
But apparently there are not many places in America where 

^"Economics of Distribution," p. 340. 



Cooperative Industry. 91 

these conditions exist. That this is true is something to be 
rejoiced over. It shows that our merchants present a stock so 
good, and at prices so low, that as a rule their profits are well 
earned. To begrudge such merchants their profits, with the 
field open to any one to improve on their service if he can, is 
as unreasonable as to begrudge the pay of a carpenter whose 
work in repairing a house the owner might contrive, with 
waste of time, to do for himself. The less the need for co- 
operation, the greater the individual liberty and independence. 
In tribal times people had to live as in a family, in order to save 
their lives and goods from enemies. In the Rocky Mountain 
and Pacific states the people must cooperate in order to save 
themselves from excessive freights, and from the hard rule of 
nature in giving no rain. The wage worker must cooperate 
in the building association because the smallness of his income 
prevents him from meeting the large payments by means of 
which the professional man borrows at a saving of about two 
per cent in interest, and with less trouble and risk. City 
mechanics must cooperate in unionism, because they cannot 
rise to the grade of employer, like the ambitious and able among 
them who prefer to remain separate, and because they cannot 
go and come at will, like the resourceful farm hands and 
cowboys of the West. Successful cooperation, in short, 
shows that people are in straits, and cannot help themselves 
individually.^ 

The Less the Need for Cooperation the Better. It would 
be absurd to wish that we were worse off in order that we might 
be forced to be more brotherly, as a community may be welded to- 
gether under the equality of a family by the dire calamity of an 
earthquake. The fortunate fact is that the doing of their special 
lines of work by merchants and employers, better than it could be 
done by the many under cooperation or socialism, leaves the 

^Cooperation and Morality. Brotherhood thus forced on people, not 
chosen, involves little morality, the gain being too near, perhaps, for even 
that grade of morality appearing in the strict honesty by w^hich men reach 
success in business. British cooperation is justly called a great moral move- 
ment; but if its motive, to benefit one's self by benefiting all, could other- 
wise be carried out with better results, then its effort would be defectively 
directed, and hence would be immoral as far as there was knowledge and 
ability for avoiding the waste of energy. 



92 Getting a Living. 

people free to devote their attention to the unUmited fields of 
progress whose cultivation is not possible to profit-seeking indi- 
viduals, but depends on cooperation or brotherliness alone. 
There is wide opportunity of mutual instruction, of pleasure, 
and of advancement, in trade unions, in business men's associa- 
tions, in farmers' clubs, and in literary societies. But the field of 
cooperation and brotherliness that can never be over-worked, 
if wisdom be adhered to, is that of government. In many im- 
portant respects it is generally in a condition of crying neglect. 
Here there is unlimited need for getting rid of blind partisan- 
ship, and for uniting patriotically to improve and enlarge col- 
lective action in regard to municipal services, public education, 
protection of the weak by factory laws, and social betterment 
in many forms. When in these ways the people are given more 
knowledge and capability for caring for themselves, they will 
not be over-influenced by the installment agent, nor by sustain- 
ing useless stores will they permit merchandising to be so 
divided up that retail price will remain unduly high in propor- 
tion to wholesale. The only way to save the. people, and to 
keep them saved, is to put them on their feet and teach them 
individual self-direction. Nothing but continual practice in 
individual bargaining and deciding will ever keep them able to 
care for themselves ; and when unable to do this no possible 
arrangement will long save them from neglect and exploitation. 
Under no attainable brotherliness in cooperation or socialism 
will the officials, and the strong in general, refrain long from 
preying in some way upon a mass of people made helpless by 
being cared for as children. So it has been decreed by nature. 
Sounder results in character and well-being are therefore to be 
attained where the unselfish spirit of cooperation can work 
successfully in these other lines of effort. 

The American Cooperative Communities, which have been 
coming and going for a century — holding property and pro- 
ducing wealth under a common or equal ownership, and com- 
fortably providing for all members according to needs — are 
exceptions that prove the unsoundness in this age of tribal, 
communal, or cooperative living and working. Most of those 
continuing long have been held together by odd religious be- 
liefs, usually with some that are commendable within limits,. 



Cooperative Industry. 93 

but with others that would be unwholesome or destructive doc- 
trines to become prevalent in society. Among the usual char- 
acteristics are plain dressing, serious living, and disfavor to- 
ward marriage. The Zoarites and Harmonists, two wealthy- 
communities in Ohio, passed out of existence several years ago 
as organizations, after a history of nearly a century.^ With the 
Harmonists "individual ambition began to take the place of the 
old ideal, and soon the very life and soul of the movement were 
gone." The Shakers also, the best managed and richest of 
these organizations, having in 1901 seventeen societies in nine 
states, have long been decreasing in numbers, having now less 
than 2,000. They neither marry nor give in marriage. The 
reason for the passing away of all these societies seems clear. 
Their plan is contrary to nature's law of progress. As soon as 
safety permitted primitive people to leave the family in the tribe, 
individual ownership of land and capital appeared. The only 
reasons now why a person should live in one of these com- 
munities are to help the others or be helped himself. The per- 
son receiving such help is weakened in business capacity, self- 
reliance, and usefulness to society or to himself. The person 
giving the help is causing that weakness, and hence harming 
everybody. People were evidently not fitted to spend their lives 
in the home family when there is no longer the primitive reason 
of inability to live otherwise. When one becomes a man he 

^Still Starting and Failing. The following quotation is taken from Rev. 
Alexander Kent's article in U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 35, July, 1901, in 
which he describes these various communities. "Mr. Noyes'^ 'History of 
American Socialism' (1875) gives an account of forty-five different experi- 
ments growing out of the Owen movement in the twenties and the Fourier 
movement in the forties, not one of which remains. As near as we can 
judge from the facts obtained, the average life of these experiments was 
about two years. Nevertheless, 'hope springs eternal in the human breast,' 
and the last decade of the nineteenth century was perhaps more prolific of 
schemes and efforts to get out of the competitive struggle, with its pitiful 
extremes of wealth and poverty, into the cooperative life, with its promise 
of freedom from these ills, than any prior period in our history. It cannot, 
however, be claimed, it is feared, that these later efforts give any greater 
promise of success than the earlier. Something more than a score of these 
are making a desperate struggle to get a foothold, or to resist the disinte- 
grating influence of their unfriendly environment, but apparently with 
little prospect of desired success." 



94 Getting a Living. 

must put away childish things, or society will suffer, and he too 
in the long run, however comfortable his berth may be for a 
time. A nation composed of large communities living co- 
operatively, instead of being composed of men and of families 
supporting themselves individually, would not long amount to 
much in this age, in wealth production, in progress, or in any 
real well-being. Man was not created for animal comfort. 
Even M. Godin's philanthropic and far-seeing provision for the 
French industrial community bearing his name,^ will probably 
not result in permanent benefit to society. 

The Principle of Brotherhood is Too Sacred to be drawn on 
very far. Imposition soon arises — cannot well be avoided, 
under the best intentions — in united effort that is hot kept indi- 
vidually just by definite bargaining and frequent settlement. 
Services performed by the indolent will not balance those of 
the industrious, the result being a worse exploitation than any 
ever ascribed to capitalism by the most frenzied socialist. In 
many a case one of a group of unmarried brothers and sisters 
remaining on the home farm, with a loose understanding as to 
division of work and of income, and no settlements, has spent 
a long period wnth far less return for service than could have 
been obtained otherwise, and parts under a feeling of injustice. 
From difference of views, this may be the experience where 
each one tries to be fair. By reason of the evil effects on so- 
ciety, it is almost as wrong for a person to fail to get his own 
dues as to be guilty of neglect or fraud himself. His failure 
to protect himself encourages the practice of obtaining without 
rendering 'a just return. Even neglect to do his share toward 
preventing unjust gaining from others is wrong. To be mer- 
itorious, instead of blamable, his giving must be to the deserv- 
ing, not to those who neglect, impose upon, or defraud him. 
Real altruism is not only to pay as you go, but to see that others 
pay too. To make them do so is required not only by justice, 
but by love. Many a son, fully as filial and conscientious as 
people are likely to be within any cycle of time we need to con- 
sider, neglectfully permits an overworked mother to wait on 
him while at home, spending herself on little services he easily 
does for himself when away at work. She means well, but the 

^Described in U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 6. 



Cooperative Industry. 95 

effect is to spoil his habits and character. To the person able 
to work or pay, there can never be, without ruinous conse- 
quences, any way of getting things without rendering a return 
for them at their market value. 

Individual Competition is Not to be Run Away From, but 
as the principle of progress and of strength in human charac- 
ter it is to be reasonably restrained here and there by factory 
laws, union agreements, and trade associations, and met by 
such education as will enable the people as a whole- to enjoy its 
advantages and avoid its dangers.^ When kept reasonable 
by a few restraints, it is the one force that can secure rewards 

^The Spirit of Gaining for One's Self. In British cooperation there 
seems to be an element of unnaturalness and unwholesomeness in the fear to 
expose the wholesale managers to the temptation of profit making for them- 
selves. The attention given in the literature of cooperation to decrying 
profit making is not an indication of strength. The same sentiment appears 
when some trade unionists oppose piece work on the ground that it promotes 
selfishness. Among people taking care of themselves a man cannot get 
profit without rendering a good return for it, benefiting himself no more 
than others. And with piece workers there is mental incapacity, or a need 
for piece work's discipline to intelligence, when each cannot perceive what 
is a just share of the advantages; while there is need for piece work's dis- 
cipline in self-control and morality when the greed is too eager for willing 
allowance of justice to each. Generally these difficulties do not arise. 

Communists Must Live Apart. "In none of the attempts yet made has 
the altruistic sentiment been adequate to the task of resisting the strain 
put upon it by a competitive environment. And this is well, for however 
numerous the 'others' may be in these colony movements, they are less than 
drops in the bucket to the 'others' in the world outside, and it is the inex- 
orable law of moral progress that those in advance cannot disconnect them- 
selves from those in the rear. We are all bound together in one bundle of 
interests, and the progress of the advance guard of the race is measured by 
the interest it takes in those who are behind." (Rev. Alexander Kent.) 
Amana Community in Iowa, which has prospered for sixty years, is now 
being invaded by curious excursionists ; such contact with outsiders, giving 
the younger ambition for gain and for more varied life, may lead to its 
dissolution after the older members have passed away. (Prof. R. T. Ely, 
Harper's, Oct. 1902.) Going apart into a community, though under mis- 
taken notions the motive of those doing so may usually be good, seems to be 
nothing else than a vain attempt to shirk the duties of life. Second only to 
getting a living for one's self and family is the duty of benefiting one's self 
and neighbors by uniting with them in hopeful effort to cheer up life, and to 
improve the conditions of the society we have, which has been evolved ac- 
cording to nature, and cannot be changed suddenly by the wisdom of man. 



96 Getting a Living. 

to men according to service, and such rewards alone can raise 
service to its best and maintain high civilization. To but a 
slight extent is competition warfare, as in the case of a gas 
company cutting prices to destroy a rival (a natural monopoly 
here for the city to own or control). Excepting a few such 
cases, for all of which means of public control are practicable, 
competition among intelligent people — not to be deceived^is 
and must be a reasonable and honest effort to get patronage 
by deserving it. A hundred are benefited by better service 
where one is harmed by being left behind ; and he, besides hav- 
ing no right to the prize another has fairly won, will eventually 
be benefited himself by the effect of the latter's superior service 
to advance the welfare of all. Ordinarily, as shown in various 
forms of trade spirit, there is no lack of brotherliness among 
the competitors themselves ; but it stops short of the point at 
which it makes them monopolists, robbing instead of serving. 

With reasonable faith and hope in a Creator who knew better than we how 
to constitute humanity, and by honestly recognizing in our own faults that 
we are no better than many others whose sympathy we may have by de- 
serving it, we shall find that faithful effort to do our best will make life in 
the competitive sphere quite passable. 



CHAPTER V. 
PROFIT SHARING. 

An Addition to Wages. Profit sharing is the practice of 
making an addition to wages of an annual or semi-annual pay- 
ment of money determined in total amount by total profit real- 
ized, and divided among the workmen usually as a percentage 
of their regular wages. Its object is to promote friendly rela- 
tions between employer and employees, and to induce the latter, 
by a share of gain they may increase, to do their best work, and 
to take best care of machinery and materials. Some companies 
pay to their employees the same percentage on wages that they 
pay in dividends to stockholders on the par value of their 
shares. With dividends at 6 per cent a workman earning $12 
per week, S624 per year, would then receive also, as his share 
of profit, $37.44 extra. Profit sharing, as a solution of the 
labor problem, awakened high expectations in England before 
1870, and again, on both sides of the Atlantic, between 1883 
and 1893. It has had most success in France, Switzerland, 
and Germany. As a payment of money it has fallen into dis- 
favor, having failed in many cases. 

The Defects of Profit Sharing are Serious. First, one 
workman may take a spirited interest in the new plan of extra 
reward, doing steadily all the year his very best to increase the 
concern's profits, while most of his fellow workmen may lose 
their interest soon, and lapse into previous slowness. What- 
ever his eftort, under work by the day, unless it secures pro- 
motion, he will get no larger a percentage of the profits than 
one who has done nothing to increase them, but has just kept 
himself from being discharged. Second, the workmen as a 
body may increase their product and add considerably to the 
year's profits, while from mistake or incompetence the employer 
may lose all the profits added, and more besides. The extra 

7 (97) 



98 Getting a Living. 

effort of the men will then go unrewarded, and it would be 
strange if dissatisfaction did not arise. Even in solidly pros- 
perous concerns, to which profit sharing is usually confined, 
the workmen's extra effort might go unrewarded by reason of a 
fall in selling prices, or of a rise in price of materials. On the 
contrary, so far as an enterprising employer increased profit by 
putting in new machinery, or developing new markets, the 
workmen would get an extra share they had done nothing to 
earn. Or their extra effort might extract a fair profit from old 
machinery, and thus encourage the employer not to progress.^ 

Exploitation the Rule. Hence, under profit sharing, ex- 
ploitation or injustice is certain to be the rule, as with socialism, 
which, though expressly designed to prevent exploitation, 
would be the most effective means of bringing it about. Since 
in the profit sharing factory the result of one man's extra effort 
must be divided with all his fellow employees, every one of 
them, and the employer too, to avoid injustice, must make extra 
effort in exactly the same degree. In the socialistic state re- 
warding according to needs, one man's extra effort, above the 
lowest that would pass as work, would be divided, before its 
benefit reached him, among millions of citizens. Of course, 
the extra effort would soon cease. Under the present com- 
petitive system none are exploited who know enough to sell 
their labor or goods for all to be obtained; and the few not 
able to do this are being more and more protected by the trade 
unions, and by the state in factory laws and industrial educa- 
tion. 

That Profit Sharing is Contrary to Trade Unionism is an- 
other reason why it has failed so generally.^ Where losses are 

^The common allowance of a commission to a salaried salesman on his 
total sales is a fair and effective kind of profit sharing. Such would 
usually be the case also under the Carnegie Company's system of allowing 
a share to managers of departments, as in large stores. In each of these 
cases the extra profit is added by one alone, and the work he does appears 
in clear figures. 

=^Successful Cases of Profit Sharing. In the Ivory soap factory at Cin- 
cinnati profit sharing has long continued very successful. When it was 
introduced there, about fifteen years ago, the force of workmen were not 
doing well, being given to petty strikes, and working inefficientlv and dis- 
ontentedly. Perhaps some other concession would have answered as well 



Profit Sharing. 99 

shared also, as in some of the British cooperative factories, 
there is in effect a lowering of wages, which the union cannot 
permit to some of its members without exposing to the same 
misfortune its members employed in other shops. The union 
rate is so adjusted as to leave the bare necessary profit to the 
employer of average success. By making the rate the same 
for all employers, they are prevented from saving by nibbling 
at wages, and from efforts at such nibbling their competition 
is turned to improving machinery and management. The em- 
ployer of ability is welcome to what he can gain above normal 
profit, but if the lower grade employer cannot reach a paying 
basis under the union rate of wages he must give up the busi- 
ness, and let his trade and his men pass to other employers who 
can. Such an employer would be a company in which workers 
had to share a loss. 

Profit and Loss Shared in Regular Wages. As workmen 
are not asked to share a loss, except in the few British cases' 
mentioned, profit sharing is often thought of as one-sided, al- 
though both sides understand that the extra sum is to be earned 
with better work, regular union wages being kept as high as 
the proper marginal employer can pay for work of usual effi- 
ciency. But in making the wage contract liability of loss is 
considered, wages being kept low enough to provide for it. In 
this way a share of possible loss is borne by the workmen ; and 

to win their good will. Moreover, such conditions are needed to give profit 
sharing a chance, since men already working at the best speed they can 
maintain are unable to increase it. Also, as the men in the Ivory factory 
were mainly unskilled and unorganized, they probably were not prepared, 
as unionists generally are, to discern the defects of profit sharing. It has 
been suggested that a reason why profit sharing, and paternal helping of 
many kinds by the employer, have been much more successful in Continen- 
tal Europe than in England and America (Hadley, 377) is that in these two 
countries efficiency and wages have generally been much higher than on the 
Continent, and workmen better unionized. The room for increase of effi- 
ciency under the stimulus of ownership is one reason for the considerable 
success of productive cooperation in Europe; another reason is the small 
scale of many industries there. Perhaps a favor of any kind from the 
employer would be well received by a force of passive workers, especially 
women, and by a force of watchful workers also if the employer's good will 
were above suspicion. Many of the successful cases of profit sharing were 
doubtless of the- tatter class. 



lOO • Getting a Living, 



as probability of extra profit is also considered in the wage con- 
tract, raising the regular rate, workmen thus share in profit 
too, and hence do not begrudge the employer all the balance 
left from wages and expenses. It is understood by both sides 
that the rate of wages is based on the average employer's 
profits of the present, and is subject to readjustment in case 
these profits change considerably. When marginal profits rise, 
raising the regular union rate gives a share of them to the 
workers of all the employers in town, some of whom may be 
running at a loss ; and may hold the share for some time after 
profits have fallen — for a time longer than that which elapses 
between their rise and the increase of wages. Union workmen 
cannot identify their interests with those of a single employer, 
and let wages depend on his profits individually, as the foremost 
employer cannot pay the highest wages he could afford. This 
system seems thoroughly just, for work at the regular speed con- 
templated in the wage contract. For extra efifort, as shown 
above, ordinary profit sharing cannot possibly reward indi- 
viduals justly. Wages at a rate per piece, making daily pay 
depend on the number of pieces the worker turns out, secures 
highest justice of reward to workers of different speed, and to 
varying speed in the same person. This system, described fur- 
ther in Chapter X., generally prevails where it is practicable, 
and is now spreading.^ 

^Gain Sharing. For using machinery with largest results, and making 
the most of a busy period of high prices and high profits, two other note- 
worthy systems of encouraging men to extra effort have been introduced in 
a few machine shops. One is the moderate premium plan, by which the 
usual day rate — guaranteed to every man suitable for the work — is paid 
for making so many pieces (the average number), and for extra pieces a 
smaller sum per piece. The other is the differential piece rate system (ex- 
treme in reward and penalty), by which a man is paid say 15 cents for 
each piece when he makes 20 pieces a day, but only 12 cents per piece 
when he makes but 19. Gain sharing is the name applied to these meth- 
ods (also called progressive wages), the worker getting a share of the 
gain his extra output brings to the employer, but not getting so nearly all 
of it as in ordinary piece work, at the same rate per piece, however many 
may be made. From the difficulty of fixing just rates and times for work 
that varies, and the consequent danger that the regular pay per unit of 
effort will be lowered, these systems are generally opposed by unions, and 
perhaps reasonably; but they will probably be adopted in a number of 



Profit Sharing. lOI 

Profit Sharing Adopted to Prevent Strikes. But the main 
objection of workingmen to profit sharing is that it cuts at the 
roots of unionism. Men bound to an employer by hberal profit 
sharing would be less ready than others to strike for an in- 
crease of the union rate of wages, or for preventing its fall. 
In fact, to win men away from unionism has been clearly the 
employer's object in many cases of profit sharing. This was 
said to be the object with the noted cases of the Briggs col- 
lieries in England, and the South London gas works, where 
the means included also lengthened contract and deferred pay- 
ment. In practically every case of profit sharing, perhaps, 
greater loyalty to him is thought of by the employer, and this 
loyalty is openly urged as an advantage by nearly every writer 
by whom profit sharing and bonus systems are recommended. 

Employers ' Welfare Institutions, which embody profit shar- 
ing in the form of favorable conditions instead of in extra pay- 
ment of money, are also regarded with suspicion by unionists, 
and reasonably when the employer supplying them is disposed 
to nibble at the union rate. Without that rate fixed, an emx- 
ployer, drawing on the favor he had gained with his men, 
might easily keep down wages more than enough to maintain 
institutions for which he was praised as a philanthropist. 
Many large employers in England and the United States are 
now following the long settled French and German custom of 
indirect profit sharing through institutions to promote the wel- 
fare and loyalty of employees. Sometimes the employer does 

shops having suitable work and ambitious employees. Under rates and 
times justly fixed, systems of pay by the piece secure perhaps the best pos- 
sible results in use of plant, development of skill, and equity of individual 
reward. Reasonable objections to high pressure speed of work are stated in 
Chapters X. and XVI. Gain sharing systems are described in the Engi- 
neering Magazine of June, September, and December 1899, January 1900, 
and January 1901. All systems of pay are described in D. F. Schloss's 
volume, "Methods of Industrial Remuneration," London, 1898. By these 
bonus systems large results have been attained in giving ambition to ordi- 
nary men. Some machinists of the Bethlehem Steel Company, with whom 
a bonus system was started in 1901, reached within a year an output more 
than doubled. Being shown at first the best ways of laying out and doing 
work, and of caring for tools, the men made the system work automat- 
ically, with the minimum of superintendence. 



102 Getting a Living. 

not pretend to bear the cost, or but a part of it. Mining com- 
panies in America, which in most cases must start a new settle- 
ment and build dwellings to rent to employees, have long made 
a practice of employing physicians for them, usually also main- 
taining a hospital, providing for the expense by deducting a 
dollar per month from the pay of each married workman, and 
fifty cents from that of each single workman. By some large 
companies an aid fund is maintained in connection with the 
medical attendance, from which fund each employee receives 
an allowance of a dollar a day in case of accident, with the sum 
of $500 falling to his family in case of his death from accident 
while at work.^ In the danger and isolation of mining, and in 
the ignorance and poverty of employees, such care for them 
by the company is necessary at many places to prevent suffer- 
ing and to maintain efficient work. But with medical attend- 
ance and company houses, as with truck payment from the 
notorious company store, employers have often imposed upon 
their men by overcharging, and by drawing into the bondage of 
debt, holding custom by fear of dismissal. At settlements apart 
from towns, maintaining company physicians, company stores, 
and company houses — necessary at first — is a good practice 
later when the motive is to secure good service by really pro- 
moting the men's welfare, charging them the minimum profit, 
or no profit at all. The practice is vicious when the company 
gains by exploiting men too ignorant and poor to perceive the 
wrong and leave the employment. The temptation to exploit 
has proved the need here for protection of the employees by 
law. The company store is often continued long after growth 
of a settlement has removed the need for it. 

Railway Relief Departments, introduced into England in 
1850, and by the Grand Trunk company into Canada in 1873, 
have been adopted in seven cases by the larger American sys- 
tems. The first, that of the Baltimore and Ohio, established in 
1880, all new men from the start have been compelled to join 

^These are the figures for the Calumet and Hecla copper mining com- 
pany of Michigan, which donates to the aid fund a sum equal to the total 
paid in by employees. For two years, up to 1901, no dues were collected, 
because a sufficient income was obtained from dividends on the company's 
shares in which the aid fund surplus had been invested. 



Profit Sharing. 103 

as a condition of being employed. With previous employees 
joining- was optional. That of the Reading company, and that 
of the Plant system, are similarly compulsory. In the Penn- 
sylvania company's two departments (one east and one west of 
Pittsburgh) membership is voluntary, as with the department 
of the Burlington system, and that of the Atlantic Coast Line. 
Of the Burlington's employees, 58 per cent were members in 
1900.^ 

Old Age Pensions for Employees (common in different 

^Dues and Benefits. A Baltimore and Ohio employee getting $50 per 
month must pay monthly to the fund $1.50, for which he is entitled to $1 
a day for 52 weeks of sickness or of disablement from accident, to $i,ooo in 
case of death from accident, and to $500 in case of death from sickness. 
Employees earning higher wages pay in more and are entitled to more. 
Figures for the departments of the other companies named are similar. In 
its first twenty years the Baltimore and Ohio department paid $6,010,199 to 
members, and $1,447,232 for expenses. Its income is from the dues of mem- 
bers, and from interest on the cash on hand. The Pennsylvania company's 
eastern relief department, during five years to 1900, paid out $7,797,532, of 
which the company gave $i,8oi,8ii, in operating expenses, in deficiencies of 
fund, and in relief to members having exhausted their title to benefits. Em- 
ployees leaving or dismissed from the service of the Pennsylvania and the 
Reading companies lose all claim on the relief fund to which they have 
paid. The Baltimore, the Plant, and the Burlington companies permit such 
persons to keep up the death benefit feature, the Burlington not requiring 
that the discharge be honorable. To members leaving the service the Balti- 
more and Ohio refunded in 1900 dues to the amount of $5,778. With all 
these relief departments, an injured employee, or the representatives of an 
employee killed, must give up the right to sue the company for damages if 
the aid fund benefits are accepted. 

Opposition from Employees. In Indiana in 1901 there was agitation 
in favor of a bill to abolish, for railway employees in that state, the 
waiver of the right to sue, and to require a return with interest by the com- 
pany, to an employee leaving its service, of the monthly dues he had paid. 
Similar agitation occurred then in Ohio. By the common law, and by 
statutes in many states, an employee's release of his employer from liability, 
before an injury occurs, is not valid. But an employee's choosing, after an 
injury, to accept the aid fund benefits instead of going to law, is a settlement 
of his claim. In 1896 the United States Circuit Court declared unconstitu- 
tional an Ohio law forbidding the usual aid fund agreement by an employee 
that if he chooses one alternative he shall forfeit the other. ([/. S. Labor 
Bulletin No. 31, page 1207.) Employer's liability is discussed in Chapter 
XXI. A federal law of 1898 forbids compelling present employees to join 
a relief department. Such as do not join can gradually be dismissed. 



104 Getting a Living. 

forms with large employers in Continental Europe) have re- 
cently been provided for by a few of the large American railway 
companies. Each of the six named above, except the Burling- 
ton and the Atlantic Coast Line, adopted at first, as a feature 
of its relief department, the accumulation of a fund for pen- 
sions.^ The Baltimore and Ohio company, establishing its pen- 
sion feature in 1884, and bearing all the expense above interest 
from pension funds on hand, had 328 pensioners in 1901 past 65 
years of age, costing annually $61,174. This company gave 
yearly for pensions $31,000 up to 1900 — $75,000 since then. An 
employee at wages not over $35 per month, who has been a 
member of the relief department 10 years, gets a pension of 
25 cents a day on reaching 65 ; employees at wages between 
$50 and $75 get 75 cents a day — 82^ cents if members for 20 



^Various Forms of Relief. Many of the companies have regarded with 
favor the brotherhoods or unions of railway employees, because of 
the latter's benefit features; and perhaps all the railway companies, and 
many other large concerns, have pensioned a few old or partially disabled 
employees to the extent of providing easy work at wages not fully earned. 
Railway companies without relief departments have long supplied surgical 
attendance to the injured, and borne other expenses of employees in great 
misfortune. A number of railway companies have also promoted accident 
insurance, arranging for low rates, giving all or a part of the cost, and 
sometimes requiring all train men to carry policies. With some of the roads 
the employees maintain a relief system of their own, unconnected with the 
company. 

-The Pennsylvania Company established a pension department on a 
large scale in 1900, though superannuation allowances to the amount of 
about $28,000 a year had previously been granted from the relief fund. 
This is the world's second largest corporation, employing now about 140,000 
persons, the United States Steel Corporation coming first, with 168,000. In 
devising its plan, the Pennsylvania's committee studied the pension systems 
of seventy railways in all parts of the world. For the first year the pen- 
sions aggregated $244,019, paid to persons of 30 or mere years in the com- 
pany's service, and past 65. At that age retirement is voluntary; at 70 it 
is compulsory. Men retired during the year numbered 1,292. For 1902 the 
total was $328,403. The amount of a pension is i per cent of average 
annual wages for the last 10 years of service, multiplied by total years of 
service. One retired at 70, after serving the company 50 vears, would thus 
get half pay for the remainder of his life. Many retired at 70 have prob- 
ably had low pay for a while as old men. Members of the relief depart- 
ment receive an extra sum from interest on its surplus. Pension depart- 



Profit Sharing. 105 

The Motive of the Railway Companies in founding relief 
and pension departments, as in contributing to the railway 
branches or club houses of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, was mainly and properly a belief that money spent in 
promoting the material welfare of employees, and in gaining 
their good will, would prove a good financial investment. Rail- 
way labor is one of the most dangerous occupations, subjecting 
employees to great need of special provision to meet the ills of 
life. The Burlington company's object, as stated by General 
Manager E. P. Ripley, "was to enable its employees to make 
provision for themselves and families at the least possible cost 
to them in the event of sickness, accident, or death. The com- 
pany has established this department, not only because it has 
the interest of its employees at heart, but because it believes 
that the relief department will serve to retain and attract a good 
class of employees, lessen the amount of discontent caused by 

ments were established In 1901 by the Chicago and Northwestern and the 
Illinios Central companies, and since then by the Southern Pacific, Canadian 
Pacific, Lackawanna, Standard Oil Company, and other large corporations. 
The Southern Pacific allows the pension to old employees who have been 
with the company only 20 years. 

Virtues and Faults of the Relief Systems. The benefits are much 
larger than any insurance company could offer. The railway company 
gives so much in management and in donations that the cost to employees 
is about half the cost of equal benefits from accident companies. A valuable 
feature is the railway company's guarantee of relief fund obligations. 
Payments the same from men of all ages are a disadvantage to the younger. 
This the Pennsylvania company is remedying to some extent, admitting 
now to its service no man who is over thirty-five, and who cannot pass a 
physical examination. It would be desirable to keep the cost of each kind 
of relief separate. Mr. W. F. Willoughby, of whose discussion in his book 
"Workingmen's Insurance" this note is mainly a summary, says the fact 
that an injured employee's suit for damages works forfeiture of relief fund 
rights he has paid for, is thoroughly unmoral and contrary to public policy. 
He says the company's contribution is more than offset by its use of the 
relief department to protect itself from damage suits, though counting its 
contribution as part payment of damages recovered might possibly be 
defended. The correct solution of the question of damages is the usual 
European law requiring the employer to bear all the liability and all the 
cost of accident insurance, recouping himself in higher charges to the public, 
thus making the insurance a part of the cost of production. (See Chapter 
XXI.) 



io6 Getting a' Living. 

improvidence, diminish the amount of litigation in cases of acci- 
dent, and increase the good will of the employees toward the 
company, and their confidence in the good will of the company 
toward them." Mr. Willoughby says in substance that while 
in the relief departments the purpose of the companies, to some 
extent, was to better control their men, prevent striking, and 
undermine the influence of trade unions, as well as to protect 
from damage suits, they also desired sincerely to better their 
men's conditions, and have done so to a vast aggregate.^ 

Objectionable Results. So far as the compulsory relief con- 
ditions are objectionable, they count with other disadvantages 
known to a man when accepting employment. With the volun- 
tary system, they are avoided by not joining the relief depart- 
ment. Nearly half the Burlington employees are not members. 
Requiring waiver of the right to sue seems clearly unfair, in 
view of the attractiveness of the benefits to induce employees to 
join and not to sue, and of the employer's power over men seek- 
ing work. But previous payments forfeited in case of suing 
would be but a slight reduction of wages, which reduction 
might usually leave the employment still preferable to that of 
other companies not having relief departments. The same 
would be true of forfeiture of that portion of the dues w^hich 
secures the death benefit, the rule with three of the relief de- 
partments in case a person leaves the employment. This for- 
feiture of the death claim, which does not end month by month 
like sick and accident claims, counts with the pensions, and 
with the usual system of promotion, to bind the men to the 
company for life. 

Railway Positions Must be Permanent. But the tendency of 
this binding to undermine trade unionism, making the gains of 
holding a position too large to admit of ready striking, is less 
objectionable than in other employment. The conditions de- 
sired by unionists — no time contract, weekly payments, and 

^An article on railway relief departments, by Prof. Emor}' R. Johnson, 
was published in U. S. Labor Bulletin of January, 1897; and in the Labor 
Bulletin of July, 1898, an article by him on the benefit features of the 
brotherhoods of railway employees. Both subjects are further treated by 
Prof. S. M. Lindsay, in the Labor Bulletin of November, 1901, in a general 
article on railway employees. 



Profit Sharing. 107 

freedom at any moment to strike or to seek another employer — 
prevail in most occupations, but could scarcely be hoped for in 
railroad service. First, by reason of its public importance, the 
business and even the life of people in cities being dependent 
upon steady inflow of supplies, frequent or occasional suspen- 
sion by strikes of railroad operation could not long be per- 
mitted. Further trouble similar to that of the strikes of 1894 
would soon have led to the enactment of laws prescribing the 
form of contract for railway labor, and requiring notice of in- 
tention to leave work. Second, successful operation of a rail- 
road demands a permanent force of men, reliable in habits, 
trained to alertness and to prompt obedience to orders. It is 
necessary for the public good that the companies, as they all do, 
''encourage among their men the idea that their employment is 
permanent, and promotion open to all, depending solely on 
faithful performance of duty and fitness for larger responsi- 
bility." Many companies, as far as practicable, employ new 
men in lower grades only, filling the higher positions by pro- 
motion. With few companies can one begin to learn the rail- 
road business when past thirty-five. Third, realizing the neces- 
sity of having picked men, and of cultivating good feeling, rail- 
road managers deal liberally with employees, and in nearly all 
cases recognize their brotherhoods or unions. Hence, union- 
ism does not need here the same preparedness for strikes it has 
found expedient elsewhere. Railway employees are generally 
too intelligent and independent to be exploited ; and if they 
were not, the efi^ect of exploitation to lower efficiency and relia- 
bility would deter capable railway managers from resorting to 
it. If by enactment here of the European law, throwing all lia- 
bility on the employer, the waiver of the right to sue were 
eliminated, the present relief systems would probably be as 
favorable to employees as the company's self-interest could per- 
mit. Possibly the gain in efficiency and good will, and the 
binding of employees to its service, would then prove, even 
without compulsory membership and without the forfeitures, a 
sufficient return to a liberal company for the expense and risk of 
maintaining a relief department. 

The Pension Systems Will Result in Good. Undoubtedly 
the effect of the new pension systems will be to raise the aver- 



io8 Getting a Living. 

age efficiency and faithfulness of employees. The pensions 
being somewhat small, conditioned on the good service neces- 
sary to hold a position, and usually distant in the future, they 
will scarcely weaken habits of thrift among well paid railroad 
men. Companies sufficiently liberal to pay pensions will usu- 
ally be good employers to work for, from which a change to 
another employer would seldom be wise unless made to secure 
a position of higher grade. To all but a few of the most thrifty, 
mone}^ paid in pensions to men past sixty-fiye would probably 
be of more benefit than if paid previously in the smaller addi- 
tion to wages the pension cost to the company would admit of, 
as partly this cost is pay for the improved service the company 
thus secures. Perhaps the pension will always be an extra 
reward for permanence of service, above the highest sum to 
which wages could have been raised. Very probably also, for 
the employees as a class, as well as for the company, the net re- 
sult of the relief departments, especially if the law is changed as 
to employer's liability, will be decided benefit above what might 
otherwise have been attained in higher wages and in greater 
freedom of leaving the employment. By rapid adoption of pen- 
sion systems a time is approaching when employees of large 
corporations must choose their life work early, and with little 
freedom to change employers except by entering another occu- 
pation. As the company will generally be a good employer, the 
suitable worker will probably, as a rule, rise higher in efficiency, 
in wages, and 'in promotion than he could under freedom to 
change, and his labor will be worth more to society and be bet- 
ter utilized. If the lack of freedom dampens his energy and 
enthusiasm there will still be an overbalancing loss. But this 
seems unlikely. These qualities are almost as useful to the com- 
pany as to him — cannot be dampened without lessening his effi- 
ciency ; while if his independent capability is so great as to feel 
the lack of freedom, there will be little risk in his breaking the ties 
and leaving the service. The indications are that both parties 
will be too far-sighted to admit of evil efifects on the worker's 
personality. Education of all classes in sound judgment, and in 
executive capacity, is what is needed to secure good instead of 
evil from the passing of industry to large corporations.^ 
^Prof. S. M. Lindsay, /;//. Jour. Ethics, Jan. 1902. 



Profit Sharing. 109 

Above Full Union Wages, Welfare Institutions are Desir- 
able. Workmen are right in jealously guarding their wage 
rate and their unionism. An employer recognizing the latter, 
which men must maintain or depend somewhat helplessly on 
his generosity, can create additional good feeling and faithful- 
ness, attracting, developing, and retaining a good class of help, 
by providing especially favorable conditions in which to work, 
or by giving a small bonus in money above the union rate, in 
profit sharing or otherwise. If his sympathy with unionism is 
real and outspoken, as it may well be in the inevitableness of 
unionism under the spirit and the conditions of the times, the 
effect of proper welfare institutions to prevent striking will not 
make them unpopular with employees. The growing practice 
among leading employers of providing healthful and cheerful 
surroundings is to be heartily commended. By neglect in this 
respect the health and happiness of working people have too 
long been lowered, and their efficiency also, to the employer's 
loss and that of society. The staunchest unionists are not so 
unreasonable as to be hostile to the welfare institutions of the 
employer who asks no surrender of manly rights, nor attempts 
to reimburse himself from wages, and who, not posing as a 
philanthropist nor expecting gratitude, treats his men well be- 
cause it is the only right way — a way equally as profitable to 
himself as to them or to society. It is his right, and perhaps 
his duty, without regard to his men's preference for a bare 
exchange of labor for cash, to see that anything extra he gives, 
above standard wages and conditions, takes the form not of 
money, which may yield him little or no return, but of such in- 
stitutions and conditions as to him in profits will be as well 
worth the cost as they are to the men in benefits. There need 
be no trouble here if the employer's designs are those of 
straight-forward business.^ 

^What is Being Done for Employees. In a great variety of ways 
man}' American and English employers, following Continental examples, 
are now encouraging and uplifting their work people. They provide, 
wholly at their own expense, attractive rest rooms for girl employees, and 
smoking rooms for men; bright dining rooms, in which they serve at noon, 
to supplement cold lunches from "the deadly dinner pail," a few articles of 
wholesome food at cost, in a few cases giving free between meals a light 
lunch to young girls; reading rooms, supplied with books and periodicals, a 



no Getting a Living. 

But All This Must be Done Judiciously. The fatherly care 
of many French and German manufacturers for employees and 
their families has doubtless been carried to extremes, weakening 

hall for parties, and technical instruction for evening classes, sometimes 
combining all these features in an elegant club house. The National Cash 
Register Company at Dayton, Ohio, beautifying its own grounds and build- 
ings, promotes with prizes flower growing and home decorating in its 
neighborhood. Some companies build attractive homes, to rent at low rates, 
or to sell on easy terms. President Patterson, of the Cash Register Com- 
pany, which has perhaps the most elaborate welfare institutions in America, 
described in the Engineering Magazine of January, 1901, the institutions of 
a number of other American manufacturers. Those on both sides of the 
Atlantic are described by Prof. N. P. Gilman in U. S. Labor Bulletin 
No. 34, and in his book of 1900, "A Dividend to Labor." He is also author 
of the standard work "Profit Sharing," published in 1889. The institu- 
tions of many American employers are described in Labor Bulletin No. 31 
by V. H. Olmsted. Those of the N. O. Nelson Company, of St. Louis, manu- 
facturing iron ware, come nearest perhaps to the noted institutions of 
Leclaire in Paris, of Krupp, and of other Europeans. Those long estab- 
lished at the Peacedale woolen mills of Rhode Island are well known, and 
also the extensive new system of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 
which publishes a weekly paper to promote use of its welfare institutions. 

"Social Secretary" is the name now applied to an expert in the theory 
and practice of activities by the employer to benefit his work people. A com- 
mittee of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce employs such an official 
who devotes all his time to advising and assisting Cleveland employers in 
regard to furthering the welfare of their workers. Each of a dozen or 
more large American concerns has now an experienced gentleman or lady 
to take care of the relation of personal kindliness and responsibility from 
employer to employee, somewhat as the employer was able to care for it 
himself in the days of small shops. The object of the very useful American 
Institute of Social Service, 287 Fourth Ave., New York, is social and indus- 
trial betterment; and its methods consist mainly of informing and advising 
employers as to means for benefiting employees. 

The Carnegie Steel Company of Pittsburgh is especially liberal in re- 
wards. It pays on deposits from its men about two per cent more interest 
than they can get from savings banks, maintains a loan fund for home 
building, with other institutions, and sometimes rewards men of exceptional 
merit with a gift of its stock to the amount of thousands of dollars. For 
injured employees and their families it provides on a scale unequalled. 
Mr. Carnegie personally transferred to trustees in March, 1901, after selling 
his controlling share in the business, an endowment fund of $5,000,000, to 
provide pensions to injured men or old employees who may come to need 
without fault of their own, and who would make good use of a pension. 
This munificent sum was given by Mr. Carnegie to show his appreciation 



Profit Sharino-. iii 



"<!>• 



self-reliance and capability. No kind of benefit should be sup- 
plied to employees that is already within their reach ; and in 
return for what is done for them there should be no expecta- 
tion of their giving up what they justly value more highly. 
Apparent lack of appreciation by union men of welfare institu- 
tions, as shown by the strike of 1901^ in the National Cash 
Register factory, springs very probably from soinid independ- 
ence, in the feeling that unionism must be guarded at all haz- 
ards, and that to have even benefits thrust upon them from 
above, with no choice on their part, is too undemocratic for this 

of the faithful services that had contributed to his stupendous success. (By 
acknowledging a reason for showing such appreciation he must have meant 
faithfulness in good or extra measure for the wages paid, or in better meas- 
ure than could have been expected from other men who might have been 
hired. Or he may have felt that men associated with him deserved some 
share of extra good fortune that came partly by chance, not wholly from his 
own good management.) 

'Strikes in Cases of Profit Sharing that became noted occurred in 1875 
at the Briggs collieries In England, and about ten years later at the Brew- 
ster carriage factory in New York. Unreasonableness of workmen In such 
strikes may be partly excused by the natural eifect of profit sharing to 
awaken suspicion as to whether the employer's generosity is genuine (above 
what wages and conditions ought to be), especially when his recognition 
of the union is not obviously cordial. Profit sharing, if workmen were not 
watchful, might easily be degraded to tipping or bribing them not to rebel 
against conditions that were unjust, by which the employer gained more than 
the profit sharing cost. In fact, the mere offer of profit sharing, unless in- 
tended to be earned with faster work, might be a confession that wages 
were lacking. Much frankness on the employer's part, in revealing the 
facts of his business, would be necessary to make profit sharing satisfactory 
to the workman of Independent spirit, unless wages and conditions were all 
that could be asked. Where these are lacking It is not strange that there 
is a tendency to resent the employer's offer of gratuities. Very often the 
resentment has not arisen from the men's unreasonableness or unprovoked 
suspicion, but from clear discernment that with a showing of benevolence 
the employer was spinning a web for their exploitation. 

Generosity Under Socialism. But workers of socialistic Ideas, who in the 
matters of an employer's generosity and of charity are so bent on asserting 
rights and liberties, and so touchy as to receiving gifts, do not seem to 
notice that benefit to them from socialism would be a gift from others, over 
and above their increase of opportunity and of ability from unearned in- 
comes spent by government in free or cheapened services. The socialistic 
government's Income would have to be spent in services used by all, such 



112 Getting a Living. 

country and this age. Professor Ely has shown^ that in the 
model factory town of Pelzer, S. C, which the cotton mill com- 
pany owns and rules autocratically, the attractive conditions are 
unnatural and unwholesome, being separated from the liberty 
that is essential to self-reliant manhood and independent citizen- 
ship. The work people there are too nearly in the position of 
birds in gilded cages. Their status would be unbearable to 
men of experience in the self-help of unionism. "Philanthropies 
are a dangerous substitute for honest wage payment, shorter 
working time, and increased influence over the conditions of 
the labor contract." (J. G. Brooks.) It was compulsion in 
renting fine houses, and in other intended benefits, that was 
chiefly the cause of the bitter strike in 1894 at Pullman, 111., long 
considered a model of commendable regard from employer to 
workmen. Some of the worst strikes in Europe have arisen in 
connection with welfare institutions. An elaborate system of 
institutions at the Blanzy coal mines in France was disappoint- 
ing in results, being regarded with indifference or suspicion, 
until it was turned over as far as practicable to the men them- 
selves. Since then the various purposes intended have been sat- 
isfactorily attained. 

The Fact that One Cannot Do Much for People Nowadays 
beyond encouraging them to help themselves is not to be re- 
gretted but rejoiced over, being an evidence of self-respecting- 
manhood, which asks no favors but insists on all its rights, in- 
cluding that of self-direction in personal affairs.^ It is well that 

as education, keeping relations just by charging demand and supply prices 
for goods and services not needed by all about equally. On this basis, 
under the socialism rewarding according to work done, saying nothing of 
communistic reward according to "reasonable needs," demand for the prod- 
uct of a person's labor would fix his wages, which would diifer from other 
people's wages about as at present. If he got more it would be of the na- 
ture of a gift from the larger values produced by abler workers. If he 
wanted to earn more, he would then, as now, have to produce something 
of more demand value. Similarly based on charity is the demand of skilled 
unionists to be retained at high pay in positions for which unskilled workers 
at their low market pay are preferable to the employer. 

^Harper's Magazine, June, 1902. 

2 "It is a Useful Service of Labor Organizations to destroy not only 
the old conception of industrial over-lordship, with its harshness, its arbi- 



Profit Sharing. 113 

from this attitude, essential to the preservation of hberties and 
to further advancement, workmen cannot be hired by offers of 
material benefits. The many who praise the benevolence of 
the employer fail to notice that even where there is no selfish 

trary fines, its compulsory patronage of physician, store, or saloon [when the 
saloon-keeper is a contractor], but even to destroy those of its implications 
which are attractive but enfeebling, and to leave in its place, free from all 
accessories, the naked contract of purchase and sale, unmistakable and even 
harsh in its definiteness. It is not only to the advantage of the wage earn- 
ers that this change should take place, but it is to the advantage of all in- 
dustry and every industrial class, because [under the present spirit of free- 
dom and self-assertion] it is a prerequisite to peace. The old inequalit\% 
at its best, means dependence on one side and condescension on the other; 
in its usual and less fortunate manifestation it means a certain degree of 
contempt in the employer's mind, and resentment in that of the workman." 
(A. P. Winston, Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1902.) The objections to depend- 
ing on the benevolence of the employer under autocratic power are shown 
by Mr. Winston to be the facts that (i) generosity is rare, (2) competence 
to decide in one's own case is rare even among generous men, and (3) 
competition may force the generous to lower wages. The union, by pre- 
venting competitors from lowering itc rate, saves each employer from being 
thus forced, and so becomes his ally if he desires to be liberal. Besides, even 
where the old ideal of benevolent authority appears at its best, in the model 
factory town, the line is not clear between what comes as a right and what 
as a gift. Where the employer expects his kindness to be received as the 
price of abstaining from vexatious demands, it is a gift but is also payment 
for a consideration — is a kind of bribe when the demands are justified. 

Yet as Kindness is Essential Between Ec^uals, as is universally shown 
in dealings between buyers and sellers in all grades, Dr. W. H. Tolman, of 
the Institute for Social Service, and Prof. Oilman, are doubtless doing a 
good work in studying out and recommending the ways in which employers 
may show kindness wisely. In common buying and selling, where the defi- 
niteness of prices and quantities is naked and may be even harsh, the kind- 
ness shown is entirely extra, and is furthest from ideas of the relation be- 
tween superior and inferior ; being an acknowledgment from each party 
that the other is free and equal, and that as authority or undue economic 
power is out of the question the kindness is all one has remaining with 
which to win favor. It is precisely for this reason that the many employ- 
ers (a large majority of all- when small concerns are counted) who are thus 
friendly and frank with their men never have any strikes. 

This Sound and Common Fellowship or equality between employer and 
employee rests not too much on expediency nor too little on benevolence, 
and is very different from the social equality discussed by Miss Scudder in 
the quotation below. In view of the employer's and the employee's real 



114 Getting a Living. 

design to break up unionism his action is based on old notions 
of the relation of master to servant, or of superior to inferior. 
The taking of the responsibility for one's own support and 
guidance — as now shown in the readiness of common people to 
resent any gift or help tinged with charity, or any system of 
requiring them (without their consent as equals in independ- 
ence) to follow a course of action deemed to be for their bene- 
fit — will lead through their own efforts to an incalculably 
greater uplift than could come from any amount of regard for 
them by the employer. Willingness to receive help, in its in- 
evitable effect to degrade, makes the help generally a source of 
harm rather than of good. To be of greatest benefit, helping 
people must involve the least assumption of their inferiority, 
and must show the most regard for their own judgment and 
choice.^ To one of no reputation some self-respect, in a belief 

identity of interest in maintaining mutual good will, and in view of the 
tendency of unionism to hide this identity with overwrought feelings of class 
solidarity, Prof. Gilman is undoubtedly right in teaching that to a large 
extent kindly regard from employer toward employee is to settle the labor 
problem. In such regard, when it is honestly an addition to just union 
wages, there are large possibilities of contentment, loyalty, and efficiency. 
{Century Magazine, Jan. 1903.) Here unionism's cry, "Justice, not char- 
ity," does not apply. Justice has already been fully rendered in wages and 
conditions as favorable as the union can exact from employers on the mar- 
gin; and there is no pretense of charity, since the employer is friendly to- 
ward his men, as the merchant is toward his customers, because it pays him 
to be so, and because friendliness is the only Christian attitude. The men 
are thus satisfied with a sense of right relationship (as near to equality as 
nature will permit), and are not merely pacified with tips. By such a feel- 
ing of sound relationship the cash register company's girls were satisfied 
when the charge of ic. for a lunch costing 4%c. was raised to 5c. 

^Democratic Fellowship, Not Autocratic Benevolence. The unrea- 
sonableness of expecting the independent common people of to-day to give 
up assertion of rights, or to feel gratitude in return for an employer's self- 
ishly or autocratically designed welfare institutions, is clearly :shown by 
A. P. Winston in the article above cited, by Miss Jane Addams in her book, 
''Democracy and Social Ethics," and by Prof. R. T. Ely in Harper's Maga- 
zine, Sept. 1902. There is a painful indifference among many of the poor 
toward social settlements and coffee houses provided mainly free for their 
benefit, and an instinctive preference for liquor saloons, conducted solely 
for business gain. "Between fellowship and benevolence the working people 
draw the line unerringly. The shrinking suspicion displayed by the more 



Profit Sharing. 115 

that he can prove merit, is the first essential for the action that 
wins respect from others. When helping wage workers takes 
the form of right conditions secured by law or by unionism, 
their part in it leads them to obtain from it the maximum bene- 
fit. A practice of influencing his men toward wisdom, moral- 
ity, and religion is commendable in an employer, but to avoid 
doing wrong he must allow them free choice, and never force 
them by means of his control over their positions. Yet in hir- 
ing he may rightly select such men as he thinks most deserving 
and most likely to be influenced beneficially ; and his right to 
reliable service from his men makes it his duty (as the one hav- 
ing most power) to do what he can to suppress liquor drinking 
by refusing to employ or retain those who indulge in it.^ 

Selling Shares to Employees is a sound way of sharing 
profits, of inducing them to save, and of enhancing their loyalty 
and zeal. But if the employer needs their savings to add to 

self-respecting in the presence of our best intentloned philanthropies is the 
measure of the sensitive pride with which they realize and resent their social 
ostracism." (Vida D. Scudder, Atlantic Monthly, Sept, 1902.) 

But of Course Such Sensitiveness is Overwrought. Association by an 
upper with a lower class, if it is to exist at all, must spring either from 
the former's benevolence, or from self-seeking, like that of a political candi- 
date. Such association, sought for its own sake by the upper class, will be 
very rare unless the person below, by reason of intellect or other excellence, 
really belongs above. Democracy may make the passage easy from one 
social class to another, but it will never obliterate the dividing lines, nor 
change the fact that congeniality runs on a level, not up and down the social 
scale. To this law of nature sound self-respect is adjusted, and without 
envy or vain longing. Moreover, the saloon's advantage over the settle- 
ment hall, it seems evident, rests less on wholesome aversion to patronage 
than on preference for sinful indulgence instead of conscientious self- 
improvement. 

^Employers Can Solve the Temperance Problem. "It is perfectly clear 
to my own mind that the solution of the temperance question is largely 
in the control of employers. The interests of capital as well as of labor, 
the interests of religion itself, demand a sober and industrious community; 
and when employers generally shall demand abstinence from alcoholic 
drinks as a qualification for employment, the ugly problem, so far as the 
working masses are concerned, wnll be far on the way to settlement." (C. 
D. Wright, "Some Ethical Phases," 56.) 



ii6 Getting a Liviii-j^ 



his capital, they are helping him, and perhaps at greater risk 
than people with little money ought to take. A scheme of this 
nature is positively unkind and unjust if the business is not so 
safe and profitable as the employees think it is. Such invest- 
ment by employees is usually of doubtful wisdom unless the 
plan recently adopted by a Terre Haute newspaper is followed, 
which guarantees five per cent at least, and more if earned in 
profit, and offers par value in cash for any employee's stock 
when he desires to withdraw. He is thus rightly relieved from 
the risks of a business with whose management he has prac- 
tically nothing to do, and whose value has not been publicly 
determined by frequent sales of its stock in the market. For 
certainty of good dividends, and for freedom from danger of a 
fall in value, with chance for favorable sale at any time for 
cash, such stock can seldom be compared with local building 
and loan shares or other investments an employee could make. 
In the desire to own a few shares in a small concern, an em- 
ployee often thinks of such ownership as guaranteeing his posi- 
tion ; but such obligation to him could not be permitted if jus- 
tice were to be done to other stockholders and to the concern as 
a whole. An employee whose work is well worth his wages can 
hold and get positions without owning stock. The Illinois 
Central Railroad Company's system of selling shares to em- 
ployees is commendable, since its stock ranks among the best, 
having paid over one hundred consecutive dividends. It re- 
ceives deposits from employees to accumulate for purchase of 
shares, which deposits bear interest, and may be withdrawn at 
any time. In 1902 stock to the value of $245,200 was owned 
by 711 employees, $11,000 less in amount than the figures for 
three years before. Many American concerns of all grades, 
from this great railroad system down to small local enterprises, 
are now oft'ering shares on favorable terms to employees, espe- 
cially to leading men on whose best efforts the success of the 
business depends. This is sound cooperation when the shares 
are a good investment for the workman's savings.^ 

^Massachusetts has a law permitting corporations to issue to employees 
shares that are not transferable. This feature may be important, to prevent 
the shares of employees from falling into possession of competitors. The 
leading merchant of Jackson sold shares lately to employees on the Terre 



Profit Sharing. 117 

Share Owning* as an Aid to Unionism. That workmen may 
be free to strike, with the minimum risk of personal loss, unions 
are wise in objecting not only to profit sharing schemes for 
binding them to the employer, but especially to buying homes 
at places where work can be had from only one or a few em- 
ployers. But buying shares need not have this binding effect 
where the stock is readily salable, and men are employed only 
on merit ; and it may give access to information of vital impor- 
tance in adjusting wage scales. Employees honored like those 
owning shares in the South London gas works, in being per- 
mitted to elect one of their number a director, might at first feel 
too loval to the company to oppose it in any way. But they 
ought soon to realize that an additional half per cent in divi- 
dends on a few hundred dollars in shares would be a trifle com- 
pared with the gain of even a small increase in wages.^ They 
could then use their inside information of the company's profits 
to raise wages to the proper level, for the few share-holding 

Haute plan mentioned above, with agreement by the employees not to sell 
to outsiders. 

^The Workman's Small Interest as a Shareholder is not mentioned when 
a new system of selling shares to him is hailed by newspapers as a long 
step toward industrial peace. By the United States Steel Corporation's new 
system the workman's only gain, over the share buying that is open to any 
one in the stock market, is an allowance of about $5 per share from market 
price, and a yearly bonus of $5 per share for five years to each man pre- 
senting his foreman's certificate to the effect that during the year he has 
been a faithful workman. To the man earning $800 or less, who Is to be 
allotted but two shares, the total gain will be $10 at first, and $10 a year 
for five years. {The Outlook, Jan. 8, 1903.) In few cases could the ordi- 
nary workman buy enough of a concern's stock to change his preponderating 
interest from that of a wage earner to that of a dividend-receiving owner. 
Yet it is well for him to buy good shares when the accompanying bonus 
makes the rate of return very high, as when 27,633 employees of the Steel 
Corporation bought 51,125 shares during the first month of the offer. It is 
well also for the company to induce its men to become share owners, espe- 
cially those in the higher positions. The Steel Corporation's liberal offer 
in share-buying bonuses to these, based on profits, will doubtless lead them 
to increase profits materially. Calm judgment will enable any one of the 
employees to perceive how far to act as a wage worker, and how far as an 
owner. The holdings will be small enough to leave the men free to watch 
the wage rate as proper unionism requires, but will be large enough, under 
the usual effect of property owning, to draw out that effort most effective 



Ii8 Getting a Living. 

employees and all others. The experienced men of such a con- 
cern might make their work worth considerably more in wages 
than was paid for labor of their grade in other occupations. 
The employer who encourages workmen to buy shares, if he 
reveals the inner business as he should, indicates his willingness 
to trust the relation of profits and wages to inspection, as must 
generally be the case also in profit sharing if it is to win confi- 
dence. 

Share Owning as a Means of Developing Business Capac- 
ity in Workmen. Few workmen can rise out of the ranks of 
wage earners, but a considerable number can become equal to 

and sensible, preventing the ascendency of that unionism which injures its 
adherents and all others by exaggerating the ties of class. 

Greater Exactness in Justice marks rising civilization. In the tribal 
family and the ancient village the loose approximation by which, in share 
of total product and in influence, each received about what value he earned, 
was as near exact justice as then was possible. Mediasval payment of rents 
and wages fixed by custom came a little nearer, and much nearer is the 
bargaining of workers to-day, able to hold back their labor in unionism, or 
to seek work anywhere. Contrary to the socialistic hope, of a return to old 
ways of sharing without accurate accounting, under which the worker got 
too little far oftener than he got too much, spread of intelligence is bringing 
all relations of life toward a basis of "dollars and sense." The success of 
French cooperative workshops (165 ih 1896 reported 9,029 members, $5,769,- 
803 in products, and $465,175 in profits) seems to spring from continuance 
among the working cooperators of old time inability to perceive whether one 
is getting his dues. But the unequalled success of the cooperative stores of 
Belgian consumers (the total of Belgian societies is now nearly 2,000) is 
largely due to best modern methods of exacting work and paying wages. 
As society rises in intelligence the French kind of success will diminish, 
while the Belgian kind will increase. 

Is the Motive in Offering Stock Honest? For the gain to workers in 
profit sharing and stock owning they have often returned to the employer 
too much, in extra work and good will, and especially in refraining from 
demanding the most in wages. But such gain from workers the employer 
cannot expect hereafter. Though real generosity and fairness will increase, 
people will learn to perceive in business their individual interests to the 
uttermost farthing. This is well, since as a rule one who does not try to 
get all his own tries less to do his part toward others. Admission of work- 
ers to any kind of partnership will have to be done on a basis of equality 
of business judgment. But in such admission, where this equality is frankly 
acknowledged, there are great possibilities. It was largely by enriching 
about two dozen heads of departments, with profit sharing bonuses of non- 



Profit Sharing. 119 

the employer in bargaining, and in skilled trades nearly all the 
others, by following these in unionism, can have the benefit of 
their intelligence. Purchase of shares by employees promotes 
their rise in business capacity, as does wise unionism and co- 
operation. It was partly the ownership by many operatives of 
Lancashire cotton factory shares, giving them access to inside 
information in many concerns, that enabled the unions in this 
trade, by judiciously raising wages, to trim profits down to the 
present level of the bare minimum necessary to keep employers 
contentedly in business. An industry in that condition is prac- 
tically socialized. The average employer's income (above in- 
terest on his capital and a small allowance for his risk) he» 
would have to be paid as salary under socialism if the demand 
and supply price of his ability were followed, which price he 
would doubtless secure in some way, if industry was to con- 
tinue, and which would be necessary to avoid levying on him a 
large lump salary tax instead of an equitable percentage in a 
tax on incomes. The extra profit of an employer with a patent 
or a reputation is only interest on share value above par, fixed 
as justly by supply and demand as any other values, which in- 
terest the state would have to include in price under socialism, 
or make a gift to buyers of this article, that it did not make to 
buyers of other articles, and thus be unjust to persons by whom 
this article was not used. Ownership by the state of the inven- 
tion or the business reputation would not change the situation, 
since the state would have paid for them with the expenditure of 
its servants' time and ability in their production. 

The Solution of the Problem of Labor and Capital is not so 
far from being known and explained as is commonly supposed. 
The able and fair-minded thinkers are in practical agreement — 



transferable stock, that Mr. Carnegie enriched himself so magnificently. 
The same policy, with similar good effects, on the employer, his men, and 
society, can be extended to workers of all grades, by giving right condi- 
tions and justly recognizing unionism. Under a turning by employers to 
this attitude, away from the old attitude of commands not to be questioned, 
the workers will give up the socialistic objection to saving, and, as Judge 
Grosscup hopes, controlling ownership of Industrial stock will pass more 
and more from magnates and speculators to the people, with the result of 
facilitating the solution of political and social problems. 



120 Getting a Living. 

among the economists, the employers, and the labor leaders. 
The solution seems clearly to lie in agreements, on wages and 
hours, between an association of employers and the trade union. 
As described in Chapter XXVIL, the problem has already been 
solved in a few industries. Bargaining on an equality, with a 
contract fixing wages at the just rate for the grade of labor and 
the conditions of trade, will be the nearest approach to getting 
rid of the employer. To usher in the golden age of labor, the 
task of workmen is to develop and loyally support union offi- 
cials who can perceive and insist upon the employee's rights, as 
determined by business conditions, while willingly conceding 
the rights of the other side. The task of the capitalists is to 
perceive that recognition must and will be accorded to the work- 
men's right and duty to unionize, to inquire into prices and 
profits, and to demand, striking for if necessary, all that the 
business can properly afford in wages. Mistakes and unreason- 
ableness will continue- to occur on both sides, but will become 
more rare as costly lessons are learned from experience. The 
interests of the isolated workman, not to be aided effectively by 
unions, will be protected by public opinion, and by growth of 
his capacity to bargain and to seek other jobs. 

A Prophecy of Future Industry. In the present order of 
nature value will continue to be fixed by supply and demand. 
If prices or wages in a trade are too low, there will have to be 
a change in quantity produced, in markets supplied, or in the 
number of workers by whom the trade is followed. The so- 
cialistic motto, /'From every one according to his ability, to 
every one according to his needs," will tend to be generally real- 
ized, since reform of abuses in wealth distribution (Chapter 
XIIL), with great increase of practical education, will remove 
stolidity and despair from workmen, enabling and encouraging 
them to supply their needs by exerting their ability. Aside 
from a few services free to non-taxpa3^ers, such as education 
and governmental protection, no larger claim on society than 
market value of services rendered will ever be recognized long 
from a man able to work. The pauper's support cannot be 
made inviting. Railway, street car, and other natural monop- 
olies will be owned or so controlled by the public, while inherit- 
ances and land values will be so taxed, that the incomes remain- 



Profit Sharing. 121 

ing to the wealthy will be well earned, in carrying investment 
values, in bearing risks, and by introducing improvements in 
production. The difference in well-being between the richest 
and the poorest will not be so great as at present, but there will 
never be any approach to equality. The envious socialist may 
build castles in the air of a time when the man of culture must 
do his share of rough work, but each occupation will continue 
to fall as at present to those men who by following it alone can 
serve society best. Men whose ability is rare and in demand 
will receive large incomes. Since an income will simply be 
the pay for services rendered, and since men are born with dif- 
fering abilities, we shall always have a considerable measure of 
aristocracy, as we now have in skilled mechanics an aristocracy 
separated from common laborers. Likewise we shall always 
have the poor, in those who cannot or will not render a service 
of more than a low value ; but society will make every effort to 
encourage and enable them to produce with greater efficiency. 
In every relation of life, from a group of children at play to 
the Congress of the nation, a few are followed as leaders. This 
inequality of reward seems to have been designed by nature to 
awaken ambition and promote effort, the prime essentials of 
progress. If a dead level of equality could not be changed, the 
inducement would be to sink into the indifference of animals, 
though even the cattle in the herd are far from being equal. 
Human nature was evidently intended for achievement, not for 
comfort. 

A Field Will Remain for Men of Small Capital. While in 
some industries, by increase of machinery, separate concerns 
will continue to grow larger and fewer, other industries will re- 
main open to men with small capital ; but for the great majority 
of people, except in farming, ownership of industry will mean 
ownership of corporation shares, and citizenship in the town 
operating public service monopolies. Yet being confined to 
these few forms of industrial ownership, after the clearing away 
of fallacies, and the spread of fair views, will not be felt as 
objectionable. Each person, high or low, whether paid in 
profits or in wages, will get the value he produces, and differ- 
ences of condition will not be greater than nature imposes. In 
tlie changes of progress there will always be, at any time, not a 



122 Getting a Living. 

little injustice. To reduce it further and further, and to pre- 
vent a return to old conditions, society will have a perpetual 
struggle. It is on such exercise that mind and character live. 



CHAPTER VI. 
WHAT MAKES THE RATE OF WAGES? 

Quantity of Product and the Four Shares. The money or 
other wealth paid by an employer to a workman for his service 
is called wages, and forms the workman's share of the wealth 
he helps to produce. The three other shares, as discussed in 
the preceding chapters, fall to the employer as profit, to the cap- 
ital owner as interest, and to the land owner as rent. Wages 
depend of course on the quantity of wealth produced. The 
wage worker's share must be small enough to leave a satisfac- 
tory share for each of the three other parties, or they would 
have nothing to do with this case of production, turning to other 
use their land, capital, and managing ability. In cases where 
the product or income is so small as barely to suffice for wages, 
the other shares do not appear, as with bootblacks and news- 
boys, though they have some capital in brushes and in stock on 
hand. Ordinarily, during a year, rent does not change, and the 
landlord's share must be paid at a fixed sum, whether product is 
large or small. Uncertainties in amount of product are con- 
sidered when the rent is previously agreed on. Its share is 
unimportant in those kinds of business that depend but little 
upon land or location. Interest, like rent, changes slowly, as 
was explained, but for any one year the rate is previously 
agreed on, and must be paid without regard to product. Both 
rent and interest are often fixed at first by contract for a term 
of years, the chances being considered as to possible changes in 
business conditions. 

Which Sharer Takes the Balance? The two variable shares 
are wages and profit. Which is taken out first, and which in- 
cludes all the balance? For any one year, without decided rise 
.or fall in price of the product, or rise in cost of living, wages 

(123) 



124 Getting a Living. 

usually remain through the year as they were at the beginning, 
and are therefore fixed, the employer receiving as profit the 
balance left, whether large or small. A case might be possible, 
with a new concern of doubtful prospects, in which the 
employer would agree with his men, in consideration of their 
reducing his risk by accepting moderate or low fixed wages, to 
allow them all that might be cleared in a year above a certain 
profit that would satisfy him. But in a profitable business such 
an arrangement would not be considered by the owner, nor in 
a risky business would it usually be considered by the work- 
men. Bearing the risk of loss, and having probably raised the 
business to its high value by costly experiments and adver- 
tising, its owner would not allow more above prevailing wages 
than was necessary to secure the best workmen in the com- 
munity. As he could thus get all the men he needed, addi- 
tional wages would be a gift. In a corporation large profits 
are reduced to the usual rate by rising market value of shares ; 
and an individual business rises in value the same way. A 
residual share for workmen therefore, under the most liberal 
profit sharing, could not be large. With their wages fixed at 
the highest rate, and promptly paid, profit or no profit, work- 
men are not in a position to demand more. They reasonably 
prefer the highest regular Vv^ages as full settlement of their 
claim, discounting for immediate cash a share the employer 
would make larger if left unsettled until the year's profits 
proved large ; though it would then be smaller if profits proved 
small. In practice the residual theory of wages is not thought 
of, profits being the leavings of wages and of other expenses. 
The Marginal Employer and Wages as a Residue. An- 
other thought in this connection is that workmen efficiently 
organized, acting together in a time of strong demand for labor 
(when there are no idle men to compete for their places), 
might force wages up to a point so high as to absorb all net 
income above interest and rent at the usual rates, and above the 
lowest profit for which the employer would contentedly con- 
tinue in business. Up to this point he would pay high wages 
rather than lose that lowest profit by closing down for lack of 
workmen. In that case the employer's share would be fixed, 
and wages would take all the balance, which might be viewed 



What Makes the Rate of Wages F 125 

as a residue. Wages do usually stand at this point with the con- 
cern of average success in profit earning. Such an employer is 
called a marginal producer. By reason of a combination of 
unfavorable conditions, which may include poor location, old 
machinery, and lack of business capacity, he realizes just 
enough profit to keep him in business. So long as the product 
of such concerns is required to supply the demand, prices 
remain high enough to yield them this normal or necessary 
profit. 

Uniform Wages but Varying Profits. But- further down 
the scale of success wages may still be at the highest point 
while the employer may have to settle an actual loss, by draw- 
ing on his capital. There are generally many employers that 
realize less than normal profit, yet continue in business for a 
. while, in the hope that such profit will eventually be reached. 
And concerns in the same city of more than average success 
pay only the same wages, but realize for the employer a large 
excess above normal profit. Hence, it is often true that one 
concern's product or income to be divided has nothing to do 
with the wages it must pay. 

A Meeting of Different Forces of Competition. What 
then determines how much the workman gets week by week, 
whether high, low, or no profit is left for the employer? The 
answer is this. The rate of wages is mainly fixed by the 
meeting of two different forces of competition among em- 
ployers. One of these forces is their competition to sell goods, 
which tends to lower prices and rate of profit. The other force 
is their competition to hire men, which tends to raise wages, 
and which is quickened by the effect of falling price to increase 
sales, and hence to require more labor. The wage rate stands 
at the meeting point of these two forces ; that is, the point at 
which falling price of product and rising wages of labor leave 
for the marginal employer just the profit necessary to keep 
him from turning to another occupation. 

This is the Upward Limit of Wages. The marginal em- 
ployers could not pay more in wages and raise their prices 
accordingly, since artificially price is to be raised only by limit- 
ing total supply through a trust, which limitation would reduce 
i-narginal profits below the necessary amount, and force some 



126 Getting a Living. 

employers to leave the business. With prices unchanged, re- 
duction of marginal profits by paying higher wages would bring 
the same result. Foreseeing all this, employers refuse to 
advance wages, and rather than do so, some of them are 
prepared to suspend indefinitely. As this suspension would 
leave some of the workmen idle, to be drawn by need into 
wage-lowering competition with the others for positions, their 
union does not enforce such a demand for higher pay unless it 
believes market conditions will permit the margin to be raised, 
carrying the customers and the workmen of the suspending 
employers to others able to pay better wages. The exception- 
ally prosperous employers, having advantages for producing 
at lower cost per unit of product, could afford to pay higher 
wages than their competitors, but have no need to do so, since 
in the same market there must be the same price for the same 
article, whether labor or goods, where all the buyers know the. 
conditions. Besides, whatever the ability to pay, under the effect 
of increasing demand for labor to bring workmen from other 
towns and other trades, rise of wages to one set of men is 
checked by competition (for their positions) from others who 
could do their work. But to this upward limit wages constantly 
tend in a progressive country, where employers' competition for 
trade and for men is active, and where w^orkmen, by making 
demands, supported by readiness to seek other employers, sell 
their labor for all it will bring. Wages are raised not only by 
the need of employers for more and more labor, to carry on 
enlarging and differentiating industry, but also by the growth 
of intelligence and of bargaining capacity among wage workers, 
which enables most of them to get all that necessary profit can 
spare, and this under selling prices as high as in the general 
level of values can be maintained. 

Higher Wages from Higher Profits. The upward limit of 
wages being fixed therefore by the necessary profit of marginal 
employers in the occupation involved, it follows that wages may 
be affected by causes that affect this necessary profit. First, 
rise in selling price of the goods produced, not balanced by a 
rise in the materials used, increases profits, and often makes 
possible a rise in wages. Second, lowered cost of product, 
through use of better machinery or of cheaper materials, or by 



What Makes the Rate of Wages f 127 

faster work, has the same effect of increasing net proceeds, 
which are the essential product of the producing concern. 
Either higher selHng price or lower cost provides for increase 
of wages, before a selling price in either case is lowered by 
increase in supply of goods, from enlargement of factories and 
from entrance of new employers into the business. Rise of 
wages may be considerable before it is checked by inflow of 
new men from other places, and may be large, in a skilled trade 
difficult to enter, before it is checked by inflow of apprentices 
or of men from other trades. 

Demand for Labor and Causes of Its Changes. Comipeti- 
tion among employers to hire needed workmen, therefore, deter- 
mines on one side the strength of the demand for labor ; while 
the effect of this demand to raise wages may be balanced by 
competition on the other side among laborers to get positions. 
Demand for a certain kind of labor in any one day is measured 
by the amount of money (or its equivalent) all the employers of 
that business in the city are willing and prepared to spend that 
day in hiring workmen at about the prevailing rate of wages. 
This demand may quickly increase or diminish, and from a num- 
ber of causes. First, demand for labor may decrease from too 
great a rise in wages, making a workman's product in some cases 
cost too much to admit of a profit from its selling price. The de- 
mand may increase in some lines from a fall of wages, making 
the production of some articles profitable to an employer for 
which previously wages had been too high. Second, demand for 
labor may change from changes in supply of capital goods ready 
for use. It may be increased by additions to fixed capital, in new 
machines just received and set up. It may be decreased by the 
burning of a factory, leaving the operatives idle, though the 
rebuilding may increase demand for other workmen — carpen- 
ters and masons. Change in labor demand may arise from 
changes in supply of circulating capital in materials, as when 
English cotton workers were brought to distress by failure of 
supply of raw cotton from America during the Civil War ; or 
when building workmen are laid off to await arrival of lumber 
or brick. Third, demand for labor may be increased or dimin- 
ished by changes in command over money. A factory might 
be closed if its ownei: were suddenly called on to pay as a surety 



128 Getting a Living. 

a sum exhausting his credit as a borrower. A discovery of gold, 
drawing people and money from afar, would multiply demand 
for labor in the mining community, but would reduce that de- 
mand at places where business was abandoned to enter the more 
promising field. Fourth, 

Demand for the Product of a Business Has the Chief In- 
fluence upon the supply of its capital available for wages, and 
upon its demand for labor. By raising prices and profits, 
increase of demand for a commodity attracts to its production 
money capital previously idle or poorly invested. In a time 
of large unsold stocks and low prices, as during 1893-97, ^^ 
employer hires few men, whatever his command over money. 
On the contrary, when the depression finally gives way to brisk 
demand and rising prices, as in 1898-99, employers quickly 
spend on wages and materials all the money they can spare and 
borrow to advantage, and many new factories are built. From 
extra demand for labor, higher wages then may be offered vol- 
untarily, from competition by one employer to hire men whom 
another employer wants ; but usually, on account of a previous 
surplus of idle men, some pressure from vvorkmen is then 
necessary to raise wages, in many cases strikes, entered upon 
or about to be declared. Yet the wages fund, ready to be paid 
for labor, was not so large in 1898-99, despite the feverish 
activity in many lines of business, as it might have been if 
employers had desired to make it larger. Idle money (com- 
mand over machinery and materials coming into market as 
fast as they could be produced) was so plentiful in banks that 
it was at this very time that interest fell in some states, and 
that Americans made their first large loans to European gov- 
ernments. But by 1901-02 practically all laborers were reg- 
ularly employed, and the strong demand for labor had raised 
wages to the highest level ever known. 

Supply of Workmen to be Hired. So much in regard to 
the demand of capital for labor. What about the supply of labor- 
ers to be hired? First, supply of labor, in number of work- 
men, affects wages much the same as supply of an ordinary 
commodity affects its price, but with less certainty, and to far 
less than an equal extent. Commodities may be so plentiful, 
such as peaches about to spoil on the hands of a shipper, that 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? I2g 

they can be bought for less than they have cost. But a work- 
man, no matter how many idle men there are, cannot be hired 
for less than the cost of the food required to keep up the neces- 
sary strength. With no other source of food than his wages, 
he could not continue to work for less if he wanted to do so. 
This is the lowest point in wages — enough for the time to sup- 
port life and strength in at least the laborer himself. In the 
other direction labor may have, like a commodity, a famine 
value, as when a man with the one boat in reach may be offered 
a fortune to save a person from a wreck. 

This Lowest Possible Rate of Wages must be high enough, 
in the long run, to support also a wife and an average 
of two children, with the help of such labor as the wife and 
children can perform. With wages too low to support this 
family of four, population would decrease, since immigrants 
would not come into a country under such conditions. If there 
were then as much work to be done as before, wages would rise 
above this point, from competition among employers to secure 
needed help from the reduced number to be hired, and would 
remain higher until population had increased sufficiently to 
bring wages back to the level of bare support for a family of 
four. The living afforded by the wages would have to be suffi- 
cient to maintain growth in the children, and to afford the 
parents at least the lowest standard of living with which they 
would try to work and bring up a family. Just enough pay to 
do this was what the old English economists, eighty years ago, 
called natural wages. Unfortunately for the workers and for 
humanity, wages in that period tended generally to this point 
of bare support. When wages rose higher from increase of 
capital and of employment in the early cotton mills, the laboring 
class then seemed to increase their numbers in as great a pro- 
portion, and thus to bring wages back to the natural level. 
This ''iron law of wages" seemed then to be a real and terrible 
thing. Mostly unable to read, with no knowledge of or hope 
for a better living in their rank of society, the standard of life 
with the mass of workers included then only animal comforts 
and desires. With temporarily higher wages they ate, drank, 
aiid were merry in their coarse way, having had no chance to 
9 



130 Getting a Living. 

acquire habits of denying self in the present in order to improve 
conditions for the future. 

The Wage Fund Theory was then much nearer the truth 
than at present. This famous theory was that the fund of capi- 
tal destined for payment of wages was a fixed amount, and 
that all of it was divided among all the workmen there hap- 
pened to be, giving in any trade an average of high wages to 
•each when workmen were few, and low wages to each when 
they were many. Until capital increased beyond increase of 
laborers, a rise in wages was therefore impossible, unless made 
up for some from the shares of others left unemployed. Quite 
likely that was about the way the process worked. The wage 
earners of that day, having unions nowhere except in a few 
•skilled trades, ignorant and poor, to the point of pressure from 
the approach of the gaunt wolf of hunger, were ready to accept 
meekly what wages were offered, by shrewd and often hard- 
hearted employers, with whom they were wholly unable to 
contend. Thus the wage fund was divided among all that em- 
ployers cared to hire. Capital also had not yet accumulated 
to equal the desire in England to embark in the immensely 
profitable new factory industries. Perhaps the capital in reach 
(money in hands of employers, or to be borrowed) was then 
utilized closely, possibly up to the point of being practically 
fixed at any one time. Thus fixed for a while it may have re- 
mained, if laborers, capital, and industry increased at about the 
same rate. In ordinary times command of money is now 
usually the chief matter of concern in business, there being 
generally plenty of materials offered for sale. But perhaps m 
England a century ago the newly invented machines were not 
made as fast as they were wanted, nor sufficient cotton pro- 
duced in America and India. Such was the condition from 
1899 to 1902. Steel, coal, bridges, and locomotives were then 
desired and long waited for, in different countries, by com- 
panies having practically unlimited command of money. 

The Extent to Which the Theory is True. Money wages 
are chiefly paid from a variable fund of capital — to only a small 
extent from sales of current product — the fund varying with 
the amount of money to be borrowed ; and real wages, the 
goods a workman and his family consume, are obtained from 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? 131 

capital in merchants' stock, which stocks are continually being 
replenished by a flow of completed goods from capital in mate- 
rials of various stages of partial manufacture/ There is a wage 
fund, never fixed, but varying continually, chiefly as profits rise 
or fall, whose changes induce investment of capital ia a busi- 
ness or its withdrawal, thus strengthening or weakening 
demand for labor, and raising or lowering wages. This fund 
consists of all that employers stand ready to spend in wages, 
whether the money paid remains from original starting capital, 
came from recent sales of product, or is yet to be obtained from 
sales, loans, or additional investment. In some respects it may 
be true, as Mill said, that a demand for goods is not a demand 
for labor (spending for luxuries checks growth of capital and 
of labor demand) ; but a new or increased demand for goods 
among consumers, raising prices, and adding to profits, makes 
quickly a new or increased demand for labor among employers 
producing these goods, and hence tends to raise the wages they 
pay. This is especially noticeable at the close of a period of 
depression, or when a contract is awarded to erect a new build- 
ing. Real wages, in flow of consumable goods, were a matter 
of moment in the days of the early economists, when no world 
system of transportation had yet removed danger of famine. 
But in ordinary times one seldom thinks of the supply of com- 
modities now in America, where the general desire, among 
producers and consumers alike, is to have goods rapidly con- 
sumed, to avert over-supply and the dreaded dull times.' Yet 
now, as then, both real wages and money wages are determined 
by the results of past industry that remain for present use. 
The difference is that now supplies of every kind are so abun- 
dant that money or goods desired for any kind of business 
promising profit seem not fixed in amount, but practically un- 
limited. In poor countries the old conditions still remain. In 
the backward districts of the vSouthern States there is practi- 
cally no wage fund at all — no regular hiring done, each family 
farming for itself. A wage fund appears when outside capi- 
talists come to the community and build a saw mill.- 

^F. W. Taussig, "Wages and Capital," New York, 1896. A complete 
presentation of wage theories is given in Hadley's "Economics," 308-320, 
sother Similar Funds. Similar to the wage fund, there is also in every 



132 Getting a Living, 

Prom What Cause Came the Rise of Wages ? By reason 
therefore of scarcity of capital, limiting demand for labor; of 
a large laboring population rapidly increased, adding to labor 

town a fund destined to the purchase of shoes. Its amount shoe dealers 
try to estimate when they buy their stocks of goods. It is not a fixed sum, 
the demand for rubbers varying with the weather, and the demand for 
other kinds of shoes varying with the people's income. There is of course 
such a changeable fund for every commodity. At the death of Queen Vic- 
toria the various funds intended to be spent in London for gay clothing 
and pleasure shrank down to practically nothing. 

The Wage Fund and the Labor Unionists. The wage fund doctrine, 
accepted generally by economists from the early part of the nineteenth 
century up to about 1870, brought them into great disfavor with labor 
unionists, who learned, from their own success in unionism, the falsity of 
the common deductions from the doctrine, and who as early as 1824 gained 
from Parliament recognition by law of the sensibleness of their united 
action. In fact, the wage fund theory seems to have existed chiefly in 
books, not being regarded in practical aifairs. The teaching of the econo- 
mists was that trade union demand for higher wages must be futile ; noth- 
ing but faster increase of capital than of workers could avail; more pay 
for some encroached on the share of the fund intended for others, making 
their pay less; if wages were too low this year, the amount withheld would 
be added to capital in the wage fund and fall to labor in higher wages 
next year, so that labor was sure to get its dues. Of course there can be 
no such precision in the processes of society. Additions to capital withheld 
from wages might not raise the rate of the latter for the same men, or the 
same town, or the same trade. It seems almost as reasonable to say that 
the buyer in a store need not be watchful as to prices and quantities, since 
if the merchant gains by cheating him capital will be increased and goods 
cheapened for next year. Not only would improved prospect of profit in- 
duce capitalists to grant wage demands, keeping less reserve and using 
less in personal consumption, but when the capital fund would be enlarged 
by exceptional crops, and by exceptional gains on goods exported, wages 
would not be raised, whatever the fund, if men could still be hired at the 
previous rate, which would be the case, in absence of united or general 
demand from them, unless employers became so active in their industries 
as to take men from one another. And higher wages gained by a strike, 
and added to prices, would not fall on the strikers if they did not consume 
their own product to such an extent as to absorb the extra pay, nor on the 
laboring class at all so far as the commodity was used by other classes. 
Moreover, higher pay might come largely from curtailment of the em- 
ployer's personal luxury, not from his savings for capital; and from his 
increase of his business income by improving his machinery and his 
methods. 

But the Reaction Against the Wage Fund Was Carried Too Far. It 



What Makes the Rate of IV ages f 133 

supply; of consequent inability among workers to enforce a 
demand for more pay; and above all, of smallness of product 
by reason of crude methods, — wages in Europe a century ago 

was simply inadequate as an explanation of wages, not to be rejected en- 
tirely. (Levasseur.) Henry George claimed to have refuted it by show- 
ing that the wealth he gets in wages the worker creates first, in the value 
his labor adds to materials. But very rarely can the employer pass any 
of this product value over to the worker as his pay, or sell it in time to get 
the wages from the proceeds. That wages are paid from product, as claimed 
in F. A. Walker's refutation, is obvious as to the past product of a business 
that is successful. It was implied that from such product came wages and 
other capital as well. But in few cases does the worker wait for his pay 
till the crop is gathered, or does this week's pay come from this week's 
product. The fund theory did not exclude the matter of efficiency: it was 
implied that if hired the worker earned his pay at least, and that if spe- 
cially efficient his came under the regular pay of a higher grade of men. 

The Hopelessness of the Worker's Lot was stated in the most extreme 
form, and as late as 1874, by Professor Cairnes, one of the ablest of British 
economists, though trade unionism was then coming into full recognition 
of the laws, and the wage fund theory was being abandoned. He wrote: 
*'The problem of their elevation is hopeless. As a body they will not rise 
at all. A few more energetic or more fortunate than the rest will from 
time to time escape to the higher walks of industrial life, but the great 
majority will remain substantially where they are. The remuneration of 
labor as such, skilled or unskilled, can never rise much above its present 
level." It was such teaching, which included the Malthusian doctrine that 
increase of population, despite growth of production, would continue to 
keep wages down to the bare subsistence level, that gave to political econ- 
omy the title of "the dismal science." 

Yet Professor Cairnes Was Right to the extent that labor will never get 
in direct wages more than its market value, nor take a share in wages from 
the market value of the employer's ability, of use of land, or of use of 
capital. It is unquestionably true, as stated by Professor J. B. Clark ("Dis- 
tribution of Wealth," page 2), that there is a market rate of wages, con- 
trolled by positive and ulterior laws of industry, and that bargaining can 
raise wages only locally and within narrow limits. The rate that any 
shrewdness or firmness of unionism can get is limited by labor's worth — ^by 
what the employer can sell its product for. What a wage worker ought 
to receive, in order to get most enjoyment from life and be most useful, is 
a matter for himself, in acquiring efficiency, for himself and his union, in 
selling his labor to best advantage, and for society, in educating him and 
in enacting wise labor laws. Those unionists who contrive to get a monop- 
oly price for their labor are few, and with most of these the monopoly is 
short-lived, or its advantage is outweighed by its effect to lessen employ- 
ment. Where by a new union's demand wages are raised largely, the rate 



134 Getting a Living. 

kept near the lowest point of mere subsistence. How was the 
laborer's hard lot made easier? There has been less change 
than one might suppose. Wage conditions still remain but 
little improved everywhere except in America, the advanced 
nations of Western Europe, and the British colonies in all parts 
of the world. In China, India, Persia, Mexico, and even 
Russia and parts of Spain and Italy, the average pay of 
common workers affords now little or nothing above bare 
support.^ The happier conditions of labor in England arose 
gradually from several causes. First, 

may have been abnormally low, faster work may be required and the slow 
be weeded out, and the work may change to a grade of higher market 
value, so that under the larger pay the employer may get as much for his 
money as before. Unionists show their own belief in the limit to wages 
by being careful not to demand more than trade conditions warrant. But 
fortunately, as described in the next few pages, the progress of society, and 
the worker's growth in efficiency, change to his advantage the relative 
market values of the several factors of production. (Chapter XIV.) 

The Hostility Toward Political Economy has been overwrought. The 
tendency of socialism has been to ignore nature's laws, and to teach what 
instinctive sympathy feels ought to be; but it is not true, to the same extent, 
that political economy, ignoring ethics, has been pitiless and inhuman. Its 
work is to discover nature's laws as they are, and the means of obeying 
them in society, not presuming to judge as good or bad what mankind can- 
not change, and not leading society astray by dreaming out Utopias. Un- 
protesting belief in teachings that seemed to doom the masses to poverty was 
not strange when they had never yet known anything better ; nor was it 
strange that economists then took unconsciously the side of the ruling classes, 
and were so slow to perceive and teach that the latter, even to advance 
themselves, must be active to promote the welfare of all. As there had 
always been too many people for the supply of food, and mainly because of 
poor tools, it was natural to lay too much stress on capital, and on increase 
of material wealth, while overlooking the deeper truth that the way to 
secure such increase is to promote with good pay and short days the well- 
being of men. But, as admitted by Mr. Hobson the socialist, these early 
economists (Ricardo, Senior, and James Mill) had much kindliness, and 
were then real reformers. Their teachings, corrected and supplemented but 
not rejeoted, have been the basis of much of the later social progress. Po- 
litical economy, in becoming more ethical as C. D. Wright urges, will not 
cover unpleasant truth to be kind to the workers, but will teach what must 
be done to make the forces of human nature serve society instead of preying 
upon it. 

^Lowest Wages in Different Lands. This is also true now with perhaps 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? 135 

From an Awakening of Wage Workers, and of their few 
influential friends, to the brutal and inexcusable hardness of 
the working people's life, and from their determined demand 
for higher wages and a shorter work day. Second, from an 
increase of demand for labor, through a growth of capital and 
of industry more rapid than increase of laboring population. 
Third, from larger money proceeds to divide between profit and 
wages — an increase that came partly at first from higher or 
steadier selling price, when higher wages had to be paid; and 
later from further improvements in machinery, enabling each 
worker to produce more goods than before, bringing the em- 
ployer larger income from sales, even at lower prices. After 
the middle of the nineteenth century real wages enjoyed 
increased materially from a lowering of money prices of food, 
due to repeal of tariff duties, and to improved transportation 
from America. Fourth, by forcing employers — through pres- 
sure from labor unions and public opinion, and through laws 
prohibiting young children's labor, truck payment, excessive 
hours, etc. — to give up toward wages a part of their profits, 
which, before competition had had time to lower prices, were 
often unreasonably high when wages were lowest, bringing 
wealth so fast as to make them greedy, and indifferent to the 
sufferings of their work people. Never having known the 
common people to enjoy more than a bare living, it was easy 
and natural for the employing class, prompted by their own 
inordinate gain, to feel that God had intended such conditions 
for the poor. Slaveholders had similar thoughts concerning 

a quarter of the population of Great Britain, though both the number and 
percentage there whose support is below the line of healthy efficiency is 
much smaller than they were sixty years ago. (Chapter XXI.) In Ger- 
many the average living of the working class is more scanty than in Great 
Britain, though extreme poverty is less noticeable. Of farm laborers in 
some parts of Italy, it was said recently by an Italian sociologist that Hot- 
tentots would not live in their houses or eat their food. New York city 
has a large class of miserably poor people in its slums. Colored farm 
laborers in the Southern States earn much less money than the farm work- 
ers of England, but by reason of cheap food and fuel the former live fur- 
ther above the line of want. Men employed in American cotton mills, 
averaging in some years little If any above a dollar a day, have a small 
margin above bare support in the expensive living of the New England 
S"tates. 



136 Getting a Livin 



t> ^ x^n^t/i^. 



their slaves, regarding them as having been ''born to serve." No 
doubt some of these driving employers thought they should 
have gratitude from their indispensable work people for even 
such a poor living as their employment afforded. The most 
exacting of them had been laborers themselves, rising from 
the ranks, and were unaffected by the generous feelings of obli- 
gation to others that mark persons born in an upper class. 

Rise of the Standard of Living. And fifth, the gradual tend- 
ency of wages upward was made a permanent condition in 
England (not to be changed long into a movement downward) 
by a rise in the standard of living and of working among the 
wage earning classes. Their experience in continuous effort to 
obtain higher wages taught them soon how to think, informed 
them of their unnecessarily low estate, and inspired them with 
a purpose to rise above the level of animal living, into enjoy- 
ment of the larger comfort that could easily be afforded to 
them from their product, and that could not reasonably be with- 
held. It was long ago, between 1825 and i860, that self-educa- 
tion and self-help, admirably urged about the same time in the 
well known books of Samuel Smiles, had already come into 
common practice among English workingmen. The animal 
tendency to absorb additional wages by increase in numbers 
was displaced by use of extra pay for better food and better 
home furnishings, for books and instruction, and later for sav- 
ings in banks and friendly societies. The spare time afforded 
by the shortening of the work day was not usually spent, as it 
would have been before, in carousing at the public house, but 
in proper recreation, and in self-education.^ As soon as a work- 
man's standard of living had been raised to include these com- 
forts, he would not marry unless his wages enabled him to 

^The Poor Are Elevated Slowly. Of course it cannot be supposed that 
people were ready to use at once every increase of wages in the best way. 
Nowhere are all workmen doing this yet. As late as 1868 it was said that 
the specially high wages then paid English and Belgian iron workers were 
chiefly wasted on drink and coarse pleasure. The extra wages came then 
before the standard of living had been raised to the point of using them 
wisely. Those who would elevate the lower classes must have patience, 
realizing that character is not made in a day. Quite likely many of the 
employing class of the present, still holding in some measure the selfish 
views of former times, notice chiefly the drunkenness and waste produced 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? 137 

support a family on the same higher level ; nor on a lower level, 
by reason of feelings of injustice or discouragement, could he 
work efficiently. Therefore, in time, as the higher standard 
became general, the higher wages (in the absence of any inevi- 
table reason for lowering them) became necessary to keep up the 
supply of the required grade of labor. Each addition through 
wages to food and comfort, and each deduction from the exces- 
sive number of hours per day, ranging from twelve to fifteen, 
increased the worker's strength and intelligence, enabling him, 
with improved machinery, to earn his wages as well as or better 
than before. Hence, the rise of the standard of living was 
accompanied by at least an equal rise in the standard of work- 
ing. Contrary to the superficial teaching (Chapter XV.) that 
in order to establish high rates of wages, workmen need only 
form as a habit an equal rate of spending — wages by no pos- 
sibility, whatever the workers would like to spend, can be raised 
to remain above the point at which they leave to the marginal 
employer only the bare profit necessary to keep him from 
changing to another occupation ; and without monopolizing a 
trade by unjustly shutting out new men, the level of pay 
cannot be raised in one trade above the level of other trades 
requiring the same grade of skill. When wages reach this 
point they can be raised higher, as stated before, only by 
increase of total product value at the same cost (for labor, 
materials, and all else), or by reduction of cost of the same 
product. A rise of selling price, from which wages can be 
increased, is too short-lived, as a rule, to raise the standard of 
living, besides its effect to keep down the real wages in com- 
modities enjoyed. Happily, decrease of cost per unit of 
product, increasing net money proceeds to be divided between 
profit and wages, has been going on continually during the 
nineteenth century. 

sometimes by additions to wages, and pessimistically turn away from all 
effort toward elevating humanity. But in this slow, halting way all human 
progress has been achieved. The rise of the wage workers to their present 
high estate, from their apparently hopeless condition a century ago, would 
seem to be sufficient encouragement for reformers. To every one this is 
to some extent a matter of personal interest, as well as of philanthropy. 
Poor people make poor business; and bad people make a community a bad 
place to live. Improving any one person improves the community's average. 



138 Getting a Living, 

Reduction of Cost of Product has been brought about by 
frequent improvements in machinery, obtaining from it more 
and better work; by increase of capital and by improved 
methods of production on a large scale, affording expert super- 
intendence, best division of labor, and most advantageous buy- 
ing and selling; and by cheaper raw materials, especially iron 
and steel, reduced in cost by many inventions for their produc- 
tion, and also by cheap transportation from every quarter, 
giving a manufacturer the world as a source of supply and as a 
field of sale. And of nearly equal importance, cost of product 
has been reduced by increase of intelligence and skill among 
workers, enabling them to keep pace with machinery improve- 
ments — to do more and more work, of better and better quality. 
In these ways have net money proceeds from product per man 
been increased, in spite of selling prices that now are only a 
fraction of what they were formerly, and in spite of a shorten- 
ing of the work day from 12, 13, and 14 hours down to 8, 9, 
and 10. From this wonderful progress has present well-being 
come — high wages and few hours for the worker, high quality 
of goods and low prices for the consumer; the worker being 
benefited almost as much by lower prices as by higher wages. 
This is modern civilization.^ 

Not in All Industries, however, has cost of product per 
worker been continually reduced. Some industries have im- 
proved faster than others. But the benefits of improvement 
have tended to fall equally upon all. In a trade improving fast, 
the workers, in order to take from the product increase by rais- 
ing their wages above the level paid the same grade of labor 
in other trades, must raise their skill accordingly, or men from 
these other trades, entering theirs, will increase the labor 
supply, and prevent or check a rise of wages. Neither can 
employers, in the fast improving trade, retain long the high 

^Has Machinery Been a Benefit? John Stuart Mill's statement, that it 
was doubtful if machinery had lightened the toil of one human being, was 
well grounded in the terrible poverty and overwork of factory operatives 
during the half century before 1840, when law and trade unionism had not 
yet come effectively to their rescue. In another sense machinery has not 
lightened men's effort yet, since by reason of increasing wants they now 
strive as much as ever, but they get vastly more in return, and avoid many 
discomforts, and many wastes of time and strength. 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? 139 

profit at first afforded by a lowering of cost. Other capital- 
ists, entering the business, increase the supply of the commodity 
and lower its price, thus transferring the chief benefit to all the 
people as consumers/ Where for any reason the product value 
of a worker already efficient must be low, wages cannot be 
raised. This is now usually the case in British farming, for- 
merly profitable. Yield of grain per acre is large, but after 
deducting rent, net money proceeds are now kept low by cheap 
transportation of products from America. In the poorest parts 
of Canada, New England, and of the Southern States, rent of 
land is low, but on a small farm the product is too scanty to 
afford wages of consequence for hired help. To complain of 
low wages and of little work where land is very poor, is to com- 
plain of nature for not having made it richer. One might as 
well say the sea ought to be deeper or the sun hotter. After 

^Necessity and Beneficence of Changes in Society. For either wage 
workers or capitalists, safe possession of one's present well-being, or hope 
of improving it, depends usually upon preparedness for some change in 
one's business, such as adapting one's self to improved methods, or as turn- 
ing to a similar kind of work or kind of product that is more in demand. 
As it is in change that improvement consists, upon which human welfare 
depends, the hardship it generally brings to a few must be accepted as 
necessary, and prepared for by intelligent foresight. It is not caused by 
unjust action upon the employers or workers whose product is no longer 
desired, but by leaving them alone, and gaining from purchase of the better 
and cheaper commodity of others. For the employers or workers left alone, 
however, to attempt by protective tariff or union boycott to shut out con- 
sumers from the new and better supply, is a clear case of acting upon or 
of attack, and involves a distinct element of holding up for robbery. The 
only just claim for patronage rests on furnishing what people want and 
cannot get better otherwise. When men left producing, each for him- 
self, and followed separate occupations, they voluntarily did so for their 
own gain, taking the chances; and there was no guarantee from society, 
as the socialists would try to claim, that as change came then it would not 
come again whenever reason for it appeared. A progressive business man 
(by reason of honesty or of fear of being found out) will not usually take 
advantage of the customer's Ignorance by selling him an ar<-icle which 
he can get elsewhere to much better advantage. Such a business man wants 
no trade that is not to the buyer's interest, as well as his own. In society's 
increasing wants, loss of occupation from the passing away of one industry 
is more than balanced by the coming of new industries; and the slowness 
of the changes gives adequate notice to the man who is active to earn his 
way, and does not want to be carried along. 



140 Getting a Living. 

doing all in fertilizing, in choice of crops, and in improving 
methods, that could be expected from farmers on such land, 
their remedy, and that of their wage workers, is to seek better 
conditions at another place, or in another trade. The same is 
true of all industries in which product is small or not wanted. 
Wages Rise With Prices of products in times of general 
prosperity, as during the five years following 1897. Higher 
prices, from brisk demand for goods in all lines, increase the 
employer's net proceeds, despite the higher prices he must pay 
for materials, and thus enable him to pay higher money wages, 
which are maintained by scarcity in all trades of men to be 
hired, and which, on account of higher cost of living, may give 
the worker less in real wages than he had before. The high 
wages of such a period fall when the tide of activity subsides, 
or when maintained by unionism the workers get little to do, 
having their wages lowered per year if not per day.^ Where 
rise of price does not come to industry in general, but to one 
or a few occupations, wages in these are usually kept down by 
inflow of men from other trades, as when net proceeds in one 
trade are increased by an invention. If the Michigan Supreme 
Court had not declared unconstitutional in 1900 the state law 
giving a bounty of one cent a pound on beet sugar, the sugar 
producers could have retained the bounty without raising 
wages for common labor. But if they employed skilled men, 
whose places could not have been filled, these, by threat of strik- 
ing, might have secured a share of the bounty. Where price 
rises from monopoly scarcity, as with lumber and copper after 
1898, accompanied here with machinery improvements cheap- 
ening production, the large gain realized over cost of product, 
fully 200 per cent with the richest copper mines (cost 5c. a 
pound, price i6c.), falls as economic rent to owners of the 

^That employees realize their interest in high selling price is shown 
by the following newspaper clipping of Jan. 28, 1901: "Members of the 
Railway Employees' Political League of Illinois, having a total member- 
ship of 30,000, will make a strong fight against the bill introduced in the 
Illinois legislature, providing for a reduction of the passenger rate from 
3 to 2 cents a mile." It is for the same reason that the Amalgamated Asso- 
ciation of steel workers passes resolutions in favor of the protective tariff, 
•which yields their employers great profits. Of the equally great cost to con- 
sumers, very little falls on these workers. 



What Makes the Rate of Wagesf 141 

monopolized source of supply, appearing in high value of min- 
ing company shares. The workers cannot demand more pay 
than their grade of labor gets from the poor mines, men from 
which could take their places, though the rich company some- 
times pays a little more to promote good feeling and to get the 
best men. A trust also, which, by purchasing all the plants in 
a certain industry, obtains a monopoly of supplying its product, 
need pay no more than the usual wages for its grade of men, 
whatever its profits. Yet it often pays somewhat more to avoid 
delay from labor trouble when high profits may not continue, 
and to avert public opposition to its monopoly, which might 
be provoked by an appearance of a hard policy toward its wage 
workers. 

Ought the Employer to Pay in Wages All He Can Afford? 
The affirmative answer to this question, to some extent at least, 
seemed to be the doctrine of those unionists by whose influence 
a certain small city in western Pennsylvania, in 1901, declined 
Mr. Carnegie's offer of a donation for a library building, on 
the ground that in getting his wealth he had not paid just 
wages. Also, in a small city of eastern Pennsylvania, unionists 
agreed not to use the Carnegie library. This idea is unsound. 
For labor, as for wheat or cotton (money for which goes mainly 
to labor used in producing it), the just amount to pay is the 
price it brings in the market. Under the conditions of supply 
and demand, that sum measures its worth to those who buy it, 
with the present distribution of their buying among different 
commodities. Strict justice requires an employer, in the power 
derived from his position, not to get extra value from his men 
by close bargaining or hard driving, but does not require him 
to pay more than the highest amount paid regularly by others 
for the same grade of labor. Many an employer, moved by a 
sense of duty, and oftentimes by expediency, would pay willing 
v/orkers, contributing to his prosperity, something extra in 
wages or indirect benefits, even above the extent to which the 
extra pay caused them to increase their product value, thus 
making cost of labor slightly higher with him than with others 
— equalized only by his possession of greater good will from his 
men. But the same sense of duty, not selfishness, might cause 
him to withhold the extra pay from men demanding it, under 



142 Getting a Living. 

unsound and harmful notions of their rights. Being simply a 
gift, since he could hire equally good men in the market at the 
regular rate, he might reasonably feel that it should be be- 
stowed in some wise way on other and poorer people to be 
deemed more deserving, whom it might lift up and make more 
useful to society, without encouraging ideas and hopes never 
to be realized because contrary to nature.^ 

Full Wages Paid by Many Concerns Running at a Loss. 
It may be true that the employers who pay in wages a share of 
income too large, considering that little or no profit is realized 
by them, are fully as numerous as those who from great profits 
could afford to pay their workmen more. At least, it is cer- 
tainly true that excess in one direction is balanced by excess in 

^Generously Paying Three Dollars to Two-Dollar Men. The late 
W. S. Stratton, a millionaire mine owner of Cripple Creek, Col., was re- 
ported in 1901 to have said he was paying $3 to $5 a day for labor he 
could get for half these prices, his reason being that he was once a car- 
penter, and ought not to take advantage of his fellow men's necessities. 
Such jobs as he mentions would yield rent, like land of extra desirableness. 
A steady position with such an employer, if his $3 per day were exactly 
double the wages paid by others, might rent for about $1.35 per day, leav- 
ing the tenant a gain of 15 cents for his trouble and investment. The 
owner of the position could live on the $1.35, doing nothing himself; or he 
might sell his job for a lump sum, say $1,000. Perhaps the generous em- 
ployer would not permit such a plutocratic practice. Would it be any less 
plutocratic for the owner of the job to occupy it himself, while rendering no 
more value in labor than others rendered for half his pay, and while not 
earning the extra amount as rent and interest are earned? (Chapters I. and 
II.) To the extent of the extra amount would he not be as truly a 
parasite as the idlest son of a landlord in Europe? And would the case be 
different with a public employee, so far as his pay was above the highest 
his labor would bring from private employers? (Chapter XV.) In a 
sense public positions are now bought or rented with election expenses, often 
reaching $1,000 for a two-year term in a county office worth about $3,000 
a year, and with the continual effort made to hold the favor of voters or 
of appointing officers. In corrupt cities the boss is paid with votes and 
sometimes with a share of the salary. Positions yielding tips are rented by 
accepting low wages or none. 

Gen. W. J. Palmer, of Colorado Springs, it was published in 1901, made 
a gift that year of $1,040,000 he had received for 10,000 shares of Rio 
Grande Western stock, distributing it among that road's officers and em- 
ployees, from vice-president to section foreman. Positions with such an 
employer, if it were supposed he would make a gift soon, might bear a 
price if transferable. The White Star company, after selling its business 



What Makes the Rate of Wagesf 143 

the other.^ The benefit to society from the great profits of the 
few is that the chance to secure them, as a prize, draws out 
men's efforts in all the grades of industry, developing capacity, 
improving machinery, increasing and cheapening society's sup- 
plies. Those employers running at a loss, or at a profit below 
the average, would leave the business if there were no chance 
of entering the ranks of those realizing a profit above the 
average. The high profits of the latter, by keeping in business 
the former, provide for workers the former's employment, and 
hence, by utilizing labor supply, make the one rate of wages (for 
all of a grade) so high as it is. Thus the working class are ben- 
efited by the high profits of the few, besides their benefit as 
consumers in cheapened supplies. Under the socialistic plan 
of guaranteeing at least a fair reward to all, but of allowing to 
none the great prizes, there could be little if any progress — 
according to the extent to which equality of reward was made 
to vary from effectiveness of service. 

To Change the Market Rate of Wages When Too Low, 
the workers, as stated repeatedly in these chapters, must change 
their location or occupation, or increase their efficiency. Their 
labor product can thus be made to bring higher wages by mak- 
ing it worth more. To awaken society's conscience to the duty 
of assisting workers to reach a plane of better living, and of 
preventing growth of monopolistic abuses among capitalists, 
is a good eft'ect of socialistic teaching, however impossible and 
absurd the socialistic proposals may be. Yet the market rate 
of wages does not, and doubtless ought not, depend much on 

in 1903 to the shipping combination, distributed tens of thousands of dollars 
among its New York employees. Such gifts are about the same as legacies 
to friends, as are the yearly stock bonuses with which a Wisconsin pump 
maker nearly doubles the wages of his men, {Independent, March i?, 
1903.) Ordinarily the same money would benefit society vastly more if 
devoted to education, or to various reforms. However, for the very large 
Christmas gifts of money reported as given each year by J. P. Morgan to 
his clerks, there may be a fair return in exceptional efficiency and fidelity. 
That would be one way of voluntarily raising salaries. The $10,000 to 
$35,000 each in bonds given in 1901 to 22 leading employees of the Carnegie 
steel works had been earned under agreement by faithful service. 

/That is, in the expenses and losses of establishing businesses men go as 
far as they deem the chances of exceptional gain to be worth. See page 15. 



144 Getting a Living. 

sympathy. Where it does depend partly on this, as in the case 
of European farm workers who, in their ignorance and help- 
lessness, could be hired for less but are not because the em- 
ployer would be ashamed to offer less — the rate is about as low 
as will sustain life. Hence, the employer, after all, could not 
choose to pay less, since he needs their labor continuously. 

Is it Right to Pay Wages Too Low to Support Life De- 
cently ? A New York city manufacturer of clothing, realizing 
large profits, ought undoubtedly, by reason of his knowledge of 
the conditions, to help the sweated and half starved people who 
do his work — not by the charity gift of paying more for a 
certain quantity and quality of work than his competitors pay, 
but in encouraging workers to improve product by offer of the 
extra pay it would then be worth ; by so employing them as to 
save them from being cheated by sharp subcontractors ; and by 
advising and helping with money the agencies that seek to lead 
the sweated out of their miserable condition. Instead of mak- 
ing gifts to a few, and leaving them more helpless than before, 
he would then help to raise wages for all, and to enable them 
to save themselves permanently. It is of course wrong for an 
employer, taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of 
his employees, to drive them hard and cut down their pay to the 
lowest point. He may gain in this way for some time, until 
this policy so lessens their efficiency as to make the cost of their 
product high. But it is unwise, and wrong too, if he knows the 
effect as he should, for him to pa}^ above market wages, money 
that does not increase product value, and does not make the 
workers better able to save themselves.^ Yet it must be ad- 
mitted that it is wrong to pay market wages insufficient to 

^The Martyr Spirit in Employers — commended by Ruskin forty years 
ago, and urged now by Vida D. Scudder (Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1902) — 
would not only, if it caused business failure, harm society, and the workers 
too, more than would their underpayment, but whether failure came or not, 
wages above value produced would harm the workers still more by turning 
them from the never to be escaped necessity of earning a living under mar- 
ket values, to depend on a benevolence that will never amount to much as a 
source of livelihood, even though it were solemnly promised. In this mat- 
ter, as by law in contracts, the essence that binds is a return consideration. 
By reason of the effect to discourage effort, society could not afford to go far 
in forcing one by law to carry out a promise of payment where value has not 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? 145 

support life decently unless one is doing his full share to help 
forward the movements for lifting working people out of such 
conditions. Payment of such wages may be avoided by employ- 
ing no persons unable to earn a living wage. Such a practice by 
many employers, in its effect to throw the poorest on private 
charity and the state, would tend to lead to effectual means for 
their permanent relief. Moreover, a practical employer that 
would take the trouble to see that his sweated workers had 
enough food, rest, air, and encouragement to maintain full 
strength, could very probably raise them quickly to the effi- 
ciency that earns living wages, and perhaps get back what he 
advanced to them at first. To this extent one can agree with 
Mr. Hobson^ that pay according to needs ought perhaps to be 
the rule, under both morals and expediency. American farmers 
would not choose to pay otherwise, though cheapness of food 
relieves them from liability of loss. Fortunately, in this country 
market pay is generally well above this level.^ 

been received, and very few have conscientious self-control sufficient to 
force themselves to do so. This principle is so deeply (and — by reason of 
its effects on character — rightly and beneficently) set in human nature that 
in the world as now known it will never be materially changed ; that is, no 
development of conscience will ever lead society to go far in granting to 
people what they have not earned. In morals the gaining party's desire to 
enforce a contract lacking in consideration is far worse than the losing 
party's desire to break it. 

^See his new book, "The Social Problem," an acute study from the stand- 
point of moderate socialism. 

^Voluntarily Paying More to Give More Strength. That British em- 
ployers also would gain by voluntarily paying enough, above market wages, 
to keep up full strength, was shown by Percy Longmuir in articles in Engi- 
neering Magazine during 1902. Arthur Chamberlain, a brother of the Co- 
lonial Secretary, voluntarily raised wages in 1903 in his Birmingham fac- 
tories to a minimum of 22 shillings a week, the sum that Mr. Rountree 
(Chapter XXI.) regards as necessary to maintain a family in efficiency. For 
the same reason in England the war, navy, and municipal authorities, and 
the railway managers, find at each place the cost of living and pay what 
they deem sufficient, never the lowest sum for which common labor could 
be hired. This is business expediency as well as morality with employers, 
but it indicates a depressing dependence in the workers. Labor supply and 
demand in America permit the wages of very few to fall back thus to the 
old basis of inability to work on less. However, it is well that on the sub- 
sistence level, as well as above it under supply and demand, economics en- 
10 



146 Getting a Living. 

Labor in New Countries Brings High Wages, as capital 
there brings high interest, because each is scarce in proportion 
to the many opportunities to use it profitably. With a wide 
area of free land, as much must be paid in wages as the laborer 
could earn by farming for himself ; and no work is undertaken 
whose product is likely to be insufficient to bear high wages 
and still yield satisfactory profit. For these reasons wages in 
America, compared with the current rates in Europe, have 
been high ever since early colonial times. The basis of the 
high wages of new countries is now specially exemplified in 
the far West. In Butte, Montana, where $3 a day has long 
been paid to such common laborers as are satisfactory there, 
and up to $6 a day for bricklayers, employers are better able to 
pay these wages than those in small towns further east are able 
to pay only $1 and $3 to these workmen respectively. Every 
copper or silver mine worked in Montana either yields money 
proceeds sufficient to pay these high wages, or is worked in 
the hope that it will soon do so. With mining as the one indus- 

force ethics by requiring payment of the wages needed for social usefulness, 
in efficiency, in development of abilities, and in buying the goods of others. 

The Golden Rule recommended in the following quotation is now faith- 
fully observed by many business men. One having the stamina to help both 
the workers and himself as just explained in the text would not ask to be 
relieved of payment if he were in the widow's circumstances, and of course 
would not desire to remain in a position he could not fill. To avoid weak- 
ening the giver's ability to do good, and to avoid ruining the character of 
the recipient, it is required even by morality that business and charity be 
kept separate. "The individual who will hold his place, and maintain an 
effective position in the practical affairs of the world, must repeatedly do the 
things he hates to do, and file his silent protest, and work for such gradual 
changes of conditions as will make such hard, cruel acts no longer necessary. 
. . . Yet even in these cases where we have to sacrifice other people, we 
must at least feel the sacrifice. . . . We must not turn out the inefficient 
employee unless we would be willing to resign his place ourselves if we 
held it, and were in it as inefficient as he. We must not exact the rent from 
the poor widow, or the task from the sick saleswoman, unless, on the whole, 
if we were in their places, we should be willing to pay the rent or perform 
the task. Even this principle will not entirely remove hardship, privation, 
and cruelty from our complex modern life. But it will very greatly reduce 
them; and it will take out of life what is the cruelest element of it all — the 
hardness of human hearts." (Wm. DeWitt Hyde, Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 
1902.) 



What Makes the Rate of Wages f 147 

try producing wealth from nature, all the merchants, carpen- 
ters, and others who serve the mhiing population and one 
another, can obtain wages or profits based on the marginal or 
lowest acceptable return in mining. Its large income and 
wages set profits and other wages for the community, and make 
them high, in the same way that in a poor agricultural com- 
munity the farmer's small income and wage payments set 
profits and wages in other lines and make them low. Before 
Montana's large mines were developed high wages prevailed 
there, because necessary to attract to a distant region the strong 
and courageous workmen required. Their market rate of pay, 
high everywhere because of scarcity of their grade of working 
capacity, was necessarily made higher under Montana's high 
prices for the commodities composing real wages. Merchants 
who might come in to compete for the high profits are kept 
away by the necessity for large capital, by the large risk under 
the uncertainties of mining, and by the disagreeable features 
of far Western life. But gradually, in such districts, inflow 
of people so increases the competition that profits and wages 
fall, until their excess over the rates prevailing elsewhere is 
clearly no more than sufficient to balance differences in quality 
of labor, in risk, in desirableness of the respective locations as 
places in which to live, and to balance the difficulties of moving 
and obtaining a foothold. 

Wages Not High Where the Natives "Work. If the Mon- 
tana Indians had been willing to work, wages would not have 
been so high for the kinds of work they could do. The com- 
mon laborers whose aggressive unions would now keep out 
Chinamen or other cheap workers, confining the Chinese to a 
non-competing group in household drudgery, would then never 
have come to the district, and the Indian's low wages would 
have prevailed from the first. This has been so with mines 
ope.ied in Mexico and South Africa, where there is a supply 
of cheap common labor. Kaffirs in the Kimberly diamond 
mines are paid about $1.25 a day. But money wages of skilled 
workmen must be high there, to induce them to com.e at large 
expense to a region so distant, and with such high cost of 
living. 

The Effect of New Industries on Wages is to raise them by 



148 Getting a Living, 

increasing the demand for labor, if the supply is not increased 
as fast. If the $1.25 to $1.50 a day paid to men building a rail- 
road is greater in net desirableness than the local wages with 
board to farm hands, farmers may have to raise the pay of their 
best men, or put up with inefficient men unsuitable for the rush 
of railroad work. Often for a while in such cases, from lack of 
men, farmers cultivate less land, and do more grazing. But 
where men come from a distance, giving up there very low 
w^ages or irregular employment, or where many are idle^ a large 
addition to local demand for labor may not raise local wages. 
This is usually the case where a new factory is started. Regu- 
lar wages are not raised, but it is then easier to find work, and 
more of the inefficient are hired, who are not taken while others 
are yet to be had. It is when workmen within reach are already 
well employed that new demand raises wages materially. This 
was notably the case in Michigan during the rapid building of 
electric railways in the busy times of 1901-3. Employers then 
offered higher pay to induce men to leave other jobs, and wages 
of common labor rose from $1.25 up to $1.75 a day, and besides, 
the day was usually made an hour shorter. Farm wages, with 
board, rose from $15 to $20 up to $25 per month, and for the 
summer months of 1903 some farmers are said to have paid, 
with board, $2 a day. Previously, during 1894-97, many had 
willingly worked at $1 a day, since for labor's product prices 
were then low, and by taking less than the regular $1.25 em- 
ployers could be given sufficient profit to induce them to hire 
more men from the idle throng. 

Local Farm Wages as Affected by Manufacturing. Varied 
manufacturing in the north of England has kept farm wages 
there for many years much higher than in the agricultural 
southern counties. The same is true of New England in 
America, as compared with some of the purely agricultural 
states. By reason of larger population not engaged in agricul- 
ture, better demand and higher prices for vegetables, fruits, and 
poultry yield the farmer a larger income to divide with his wage 
workers. The latter, knowing the wages paid in the factories 
for work they could do, must be paid as much on farms. Com- 
petition between the farmer and the manufacturer to hire men 
raises wages by leading each to offer more in order to get the 



What Makes the Rate of Wages? 149 

help he needs. Also, the intelligence of workers in such a 
community enables them to bargain with employers so as to get 
in wages all that marginal profits can spare. But the difference 
is less than it seems. The energy and intelligence necessary to 
success on a New England market farm, paying large wages, 
are of a higher grade than are these qualities with ordinary 
farmers in the South. The latter could not produce enough in 
New England to pay much in wages ; while the New England 
market farmer, even in those states having the lowest prices 
and wages, could probably contrive to do nearly as well as 
where he is. The different incomes of the two sets of farmicrs, 
and the dift'erent wag-es of their hired men, are not for the same 
quality of work.^ 

Manufacturing Raises Wages by Raising Intelligence. 
The chief effect of manufacturing on wages comes, not from 
increase of labor demand, since in these days of easy traveling 
labor supply could be increased faster, but from development 
of industrial quickness and ambition, among wage workers and 

^High Prices of Farm Produce in New England are due to the fact 
that there it is necessary to fertilize poor land. In Great Britain, where soil 
is rich, high price is necessitated by pressure of large population on a small 
area, and much of the price falls to the landlord in rent. New England's 
poor land, and her distance from better (raising marginal cost to put prod- 
uce in market, below which price cannot fall to remain), have more to do 
with high prices for produce than have her factories. Move the New Eng- 
land factories and" population to fertile Kansas, and present prices of prod- 
uce in Kansas would be raised but little if at all. Enough more people 
would grow vegetables to supply the demand as fully as at present. Farm 
produce at Detroit and Chicago is as cheap as at many a small village in 
the farming states. Moreover, the produce here meant is of secondary im- 
portance — vegetables, fruits, etc. With the staple crops, wheat and corn, 
which can be kept for months, the price in New York or Liverpool is simply 
the low price of Dakota with the small freight and selling charges added. 
From a small product little can be taken in wages, no matter if the farm is 
in a New York city park, in sight of the best market in the country. The 
majority of New England farms yield naturally a small product, and if 
wages per day are high, afford work for but a few days in busy seasons. 
Far away from factories and cities, where product is large and labor effi- 
cient, as in Minnesota and Dakota, wages are higher on farms than in New 
England. 

The Largest Differences in Wages, varying from $8 in North Carolina 
for farm hands to $20 in Nebraska and Illinois, board included in both cases, 
are balanced by differences in value of labor's product, due partly to differ- 



150 Getting a Living. 

all others. This higher intelligence and energy elevate the 
standard of living (and of working capacity to maintain it), 
which forces New England farmers to pay high wages or do 
without efficient workmen. The many New England farms 
now being taken up by poor foreigners, content with little and 
doing their own work, were abandoned because their former 
owners could not pay the prevailing high wages and make any 
profit. Those who do pay these wages must put into their 
farming an extra grade of business capacity, and obtain effi- 
cient work from hired men, in order to get a product worth 
more than its cost. In the black belt of the South, on the con- 
trary, there is no high-keyed activity, among either farmers 
or laborers, 'froduct is usually scanty, w^ages are small, and 
the standard of living is low. If in this, or any other backward 
farming district, the people could be raised to the New England 
average of intelligence and industrial capacity, they would soon 

ences In the labor's efficiency, and partly to differences in the fertility of the 
land. There is a similar territorial difference of wages in other occupations, 
as previously mentioned in connection with Montana mining. If it were not 
for this balancing — if the difference in wages fell to profits — capital, gener- 
ally mobile, would soon flow to the place having lowest wages, and raise 
them by increase of labor demand. Generally, both in farming and in other 
occupations, the profit is largest where wages are highest, as in Montana^ 
and smallest where wages are lowest, as In the most backward portions 
of Continental Europe. So far as the Illinois farmer's excess of income 
over that of the farmer in North Carolina is derived from the higher 
fertility and more favorable location of Illinois land, it consists of 
economic rent, and is only a proper return from the capital which the land 
embodies. The balance of the excess of income Is earned by the Illinois 
farmer's superior enterprise. These two Items cover the differences of In- 
come between farmers and between other employers In the different states^ 
except so far as men in the poorer states are kept from going to the richer by 
the difficulties of moving and obtaining a foothold, and by unfitness for such 
a change. Wages vary from place to place for similar reasons, as explained 
In a note further on. The reasons why American wages are double those of 
Europe are set forth in full in the author's recent book "The Trusts and the 
Tariff." The main reason is that density of population, giving much of the 
product to the landlord In rent, leaves a small share for wages. After 
allowance is made for difference In intensity and in Intelligence of the 
employer's management and the employee's labor, a large balance of advan- 
tage still remains to those living in rich states, and in progressive countries 
not overcrowded. Their possession of their advantages prevents such an 
Inflow of immigrants as to make an equal sharing with other peoples. 



What Makes the Rate of Wages f 151 

raise their standard of living to the New England level, and 
produce enough to maintain it there, or the more enterprising 
would gradually go oft* to places where they could, so long as 
such places could be found. All classes in the whole country 
might thus be elevated in a century or two, if sound knowledge, 
industry, morality and Christianity were continuously developed 
in proper proportion. One of the essentials for this happy 
development would be a widely diffused knowledge of the 
natural laws of wages and profits explained in this book. Such 
knowledge leads people to confine their effort to what can be 
done, and to avoid relaxing effort to complain of conditions 
made necessary by nature. 

Wages Cannot be Too High when continuously paid to 
men who are not taking unfair advantage of an employer in 
special misfortune.^ As a rule, the employer is more free to 
do without the service than the workers are to do without the 
wages. It may be said that a man ought to have all he can 
get, if that be $10 a day for common labor. An employer will 
not buy labor unless he makes from it more than its cost; and 
the public will not buy his product if it is not worth to them the 
price made high by the wages paid.^ Only in cases of union 

^Refusal by Workmen to Fight Fire in their employer's factory, except 
on his agreement to pay them $50 each, would be taking unfair advantage 
of his necessity. But such conduct is prevented, not only by the standard of 
honor among workmen, but also by the fact that nobody who knew them 
would hire them afterward'. In the disorder following a great calamity, 
like the Johnstown flood of 1889, or the Galveston tidal wave of 1901, idle 
men refusing to work, and looting the dead, are forced to obey by the state, 
under the military rule that must then be enforced. 

2Wages Vary from Place to Place in the same mechanical trade accord- 
ing to differences in the average market value of the worker's product — 
differences connected with the local demand and also with the size, impor- 
tance, or difficulty of work done, and the consequent grade of skill or speed 
required to do it properly. For printers in book and job offices the union 
rate has long been $18 per week in Chicago, $15 in Detroit (raised to $17 in 
1902), $13 in Jackson (now $14), and $12 in Ann Arbor. In smaller towns 
wages for this work range from $8 to $12. If a union were established in 
one of the smaller places, its rate might be about $10. If the employer 
found good men, and provided them proper facilities for working, he might 
get his work done at lower cost per item than before. But the work in a 
small town is too easily learned, as a rule, for a union to be effective, and its 
product is not wanted sufficiently — the purchasing power of the people being 



152 Getting a Living. 

monopoly, rarely to be maintained, can the employer or the 
public be overcharged. If mining product, realized or hoped 
for, should prove too small to afford the high wages of Mon- 
tana, and to still leave the high profit necessary to attract capital 
to risky enterprises, the workmen now employed, or some other 
men, would accept lower wages or the mines would be closed. 
By stopping business, if workmen refuse to take less, the 
marginal employer will let them know when wages have en- 
croached on necessary profits.^ A workman who understands 
the situation does not spend nerve force in intense labor because 
it is a praiseworthy thing to do, or to help his employer loyally, 
or to act his part nobly in society. To do so long for these 

small — to bear much increase of wages. The largely differing rates given 
above are seldom for the same grade of skill. Many men in the smaller 
union cities would be unable to hold positions as unionists in the larger. In 
Chicago some kinds of printing, not wanted at all except at very low prices, 
are done in small non-union shops by workers of little skill, paid from $8 to 
$15. The Chicago rate for men operating type-setting machines at night on 
morning newspapers is $25 a week. Exceptional quickness of hand and of 
mind are required, and as the time is short high speed must be maintained. 
Few men are qualified for this work. In a Rocky Mountain city the size of 
Ann Arbor, the book and job rate mentioned above would probably be $20, 
and the higher cost of living would yet leave the worker's real wages in 
commodities somewhat higher than in the Eastern towns. In some cases a 
man's real wages in the West are nearly double what they were in the East 
for work of precisely the same grade. There is sometimes very little corre- 
spondence between cost of living and rate of wages. Some small New Eng- 
land cities, with a wage rate a third less than that of Chicago, and having 
perhaps a few men with the Chicago grade of skill, have a cost of living 
fully as high. In the far West not only are demand and prices sufficient to 
bear the high pay, but under the prevailing spirit of free spending the 
employer does not try to send off for cheaper men, and would be regarded 
unfavorably if he did; and under the feeling against ratting, even in the 
absence of a union, idle men in town do not try to get work by offering to 
take less. But the tendency is to exact more and better work where wages 
are high, and as the towns grow older the difference in real wages tends to 
approach the difference in quantity and quality of work done, aside from its 
demand value. 

^ *'A Dollar a Day is Enough for a Laboring Man" was once said by 
a noted American preacher, or was attributed to him by working people, and 
quoted as evidence that the cultured classes were against them. Fortunately, 
this delicate question does not require decision by vote or opinion, as would 
be the case in determining "reasonable needs" under socialism. It is settled 
effectually by natural laws, fixing how much the earth will produce to 



What Makes the Rate of Wages f 153 

reasons would be unnatural and wrong — a. waste of resources 
given him for another purpose. It is his own development 
that has been committed to him. His employer and society are 
better able than he to take care of themselves. Unselfish help- 
fulness from him toward others is to be differently bestowed. 
The workman's duty is directly to benefit himself by getting 
honestly all the wages in reach, and by saving from his wage 
labor as much time and strength as he can, leaving for his em- 
ployer the benefit of his good work that draws high wages, and 
for society his superior product, and his social value as an 
intelligent and useful citizen. 

divide, and how far a thing is wanted at different prices. It still takes two 
to make a bargain, with wages as with all else. Until recently, in the low- 
est desire cases fixing price, the product of a laborer in most of the states 
was not wanted at a cost of more than $i or $1.25 a day. Therefore, he 
could not get more. But no pay, high or low, is enough when more can be 
obtained by fair bargaining and capable selling. 



CHAPTER VTI. 
TRADE UNIONS : THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 

From a Common Interest Comes United Effort. Wherever 
a number of people are all similarly exposed to the same danger 
or hardship, they are drawn together by a common interest, 
which among men of some intelligence leads them generally 
to take means by which to secure for each, from collective 
action by all, some important benefits beyond the reach of one 
acting alone. Hence, not only does a fellow feeling, as has 
been said, make us wondrous kind, but where conditions demand 
united action, and leadership arises, this feeling leads to deter- 
mined effort for mutual self-defense and self-advancement. As 
ancient examples of such effort, hopeless though it usually was, 
one might cite the protest of the Hebrews in Egypt when 
required to make brick without straw, the revolt under Sparta- 
cus among Roman slaves, in the suppression of which six 
thousand of them were crucified, and the insurrections among 
English laborers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, led 
by Wat Tyler and Jack Cade. By human nature, common 
grievances, and the consequent common interests, must inevi- 
tably give rise to united action of some kind among modern 
wage workers. It is for this reason that we have trade unions, 
as we have united action in organizations of many kinds — 
commercial, political, and religious. 

The Guilds of the Middle Ages. The gathering of mechan- 
ical workers, a thousand years ago, into walled towns in 
Europe, was their means of mutual protection against the 
warring nobles, from whom they secured their personal free- 
dom from feudal serfdom, and obtained eventually the self- 
governing rights of free cities. Later on the tendency of polit- 
ical power in the cities to fall into the hands of a governing 
class of city landlords, in the way that power in the country 

(154) 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History, 155 

had previously fallen to the great landholding barons or feudal 
chiefs, led to the organization of city occupations into sepa- 
rate guilds/ some of which still exist in the City Companies 
of London, wealthy social clubs that long ago lost most of their 
industrial character, though they yet bear industrial names, 
such as the goldsmiths' guild, or the drapers' guild. In the 
form of rights to each guild to regulate its own occupation, 
they gradually obtained political power for non-landholding 
industry, and in time the city government as a whole came 
under control of its guilds. As manufacture was carried on 
by hand in small shops, the owner working among his few 
journeymen and apprentices, each capable journeyman, as a 
rule, became eventually an employer himself. For this reason 
both employer and employee had practically the same interests, 
and both were members of the guild. But as growing popula- 
tion and rising civilization brought larger shops and finer 
goods, the necessary capital and skill passed beyond the reach 
of many journeymen, and the consequent separation of their 
interests from those of the ruling employers gave rise to clubs 
composed of journeymen alone. There is authentic record of 
a London club of saddlers that in 1398 had existed for at least 
thirteen years, and was complained of by the employers for 
trying to raise wages. ^ Yet it seems that the earlier clubs of 
journeymen arose temporarily, to deal with special grievances, 
and that later the journeymen's branch of the guild was under 
the control of the employers in the main body. By reason of 
the continual rise of the ablest journeymen to the ranks of the 
employers or masters, leadership was lacking — first, for jour- 
neymen's clubs of permanence, and later for such clubs of inde- 
pendence.^ 

^This outline of the development of the guilds, taken from Brentano, is so 
brief that it does not conflict materially with the teachings of others, who 
differ from him in conclusions regarding these little known institutions of 
the past. 

^"History of Trade Unionism," by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, London, 
1894. 

'Webb, page 6. 

Ancient Trade Unions. C. Osborne Ward, in his book, "The Ancient 
Lowly," followed by trade unionists in general, maintains that from the 
beginning of civilization trade unions were a controlling force in the indus- 



156 Getting a Living. 

Rise of Modern Trade Unionism. From about the year 
1700 onward in England, however, journeymen's clubs existed 
as permanent institutions in many mechanical trades, and had 
practically the same intents and purposes as the trade unions 

tries of Greece and Rome. It seems that masters in the same trade would 
naturally have acted together in some way, if not in compact guilds, at 
least in the informal way of the idol makers who raised the outcry against 
Paul at Ephesus; but in that age, when many or most workmen of all 
grades were slaves without rights, and when, under small shop produc- 
tion, free wage workers must have been separated and uninfluential, it 
seems improbable that there could have been anything like the trade union 
of to-day. As by nature the favoring stage of civilization preserved until 
recent years in Japan the system of local government by feudal chiefs, such 
as existed in Europe eight centuries ago, so in China to-day the control of 
cities is mainly in the hands of trade guilds. {Public Opinion, Feb. 19, 
1903-) 

The European Guilds of To-day. In Austria, by a law of 1859, the old 
guilds having then fallen into decay, and by laws of 1883 and 1897, the 
act of engaging in a handicraft industry makes the master compulsorily 
a member of his trade's district guild, to which he must pay dues and per- 
form various duties, and his employees are likewise made associate mem- 
bers. So firm is the compulsion that the guild's dues and fines are collected 
for it from members by the local government officials. The purpose of 
the guild laws is to bolster up the individual artisan and small employer, 
against the competition of large factories. The functions of the guilds are 
to promote harmony between employer and employees, to assist members 
sick or unemployed, to regulate apprenticeship and foster trade schools, and 
to foster professional pride in one's work and trade. Some of the present 
Austrian guilds have existed for over a thousand years. 

France and Belgium Abolished Guilds and Feudal Dues under the 
impulse for freedom in the revolution of 1789-95, and in 1808 Germany 
took the same course, abolishing serfdom, and making free the right to own 
land or to follow a trade. By later laws the freeing of industry was con- 
tinued until in 1849 it was found that the people were not yet ready to take 
care of themselves under freedom (page 26). Hence, by a law of that year 
guilds were restored, and by laws of 1884 and 1897 they have been made 
compulsory where a majority in a trade so desire. {U. S. Labor Bulletin. 
Nos. 27 and 28.) In these guild laws may be seen the Germanic and gen- 
eral Continental policy of having the government do all it can to help some 
by taxing others, with bounties, protective tariffs, and other favors, and of 
compelling people to do what is deemed best for them. Education is carried 
far but not in self-direction, and hence receiving help makes need and desire 
for more. Authority in Germany is wise and successful, but modern liberty, 
as known in England and America, has not yet appeared. 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 157 

of to-day.^ By that time, in the growth of industry (though 
factories with machinery were yet nearly a century in the fu- 
ture), so few could rise to the position of employer that the 
mass of skilled wage workers accepted their status in life as 
settled, and (having reached the necessary intelligence and 
liberty) sought by united action to make the best of it. Their 
day of actual labor was not very long, their customary speed 
slow, their money pay not low considering the cheapness of 
food, and their lot not hard for those times. Resort to law 
was the chief method by which the earlier trade clubs sought 
to improve the conditions of labor, though strikes were occa- 
sionally entered into, as they had been during the preceding 
three centuries. The regulations of the guilds in the skilled 
trades had been applied to other occupations by an English 
law of 1562, which protected the worker in trades by restricting 
the number of apprentices, and protected unskilled laborers by 
empowering the local magistrates to require payment to them 
of sufficient wages. During the first half of the eighteenth 
century, besides cases before magistrates and courts, petitions 
were sometimes presented to Parliament by employers, asking 
for new laws against combinations of workmen, and also by 
the latter, asking for relief by law from working conditions 
declared to be oppressive. Though the act of combining was 
then watched for criminal conspiracy or sedition, the trade 
benefit clubs were generally accepted like the guilds as proper 
institutions. 

The Industrial Revolution, in the latter half of the eight- 
eenth century, broke down, in those trades to which the new 
machinery was applied, the regulations of the law of 1562, and 

^The Oldest Unions. Boatmen at London, who were not hired by em- 
ployers, but dealt directly with customers, possess a tradition of having 
been continuously organized since 1350. Stonemasons also seem to have 
been united as journeymen in the fifteenth century, while probably they 
were yet employed by the man owning the house built. Afterward they 
had guilds of masters and journeymen, due perhaps to the rise of finer 
architecture and its requirement of skilled superintendence. The modern 
union of journeymen alone did not appear in the building trades until the 
end of the eighteenth century, by which time there had doubtless grown up 
•the present system by which a master undertakes a contract and supplies 
the materials. (Webb, pages 6-1 1.) 



158 Getting a Living. 

consequently the customary rates of wages. In the obvious 
necessity for a multitude of new workers to operate machines 
in the rapidly expanding industries, the efforts of the skilled 
journeymen to have the old laws enforced were disregarded, 
and the machine breaking to which displaced spinners and 
weavers sometimes resorted in their desperation, brought work- 
men's combinations into disfavor, resulting in parliamentary 
action from time to time to suppress combinations in particular 
trades, and at last in the stringent act of 1799 to suppress them 
in all occupations. This act made it criminal to even contribute 
money to support strikers in a demand. Continuing to exist by 
passing as mutual benefit or friendly societies, the trade clubs 
spent their money and energy in fruitless appeals to law until 
1 8 14, when Parliament repealed the clauses empowering mag- 
istrates to fix wages, and those by which it was attempted to 
shut out from employment, and from mastership, micn who had 
not served a regular seven-year apprenticeship. At different 
times previously some industries carried on with machinery had 
been exempted by Parliament from the operation of these 
clauses of the old lav/ of 1562. 

Repeal of the Combination Laws. Having then no longer 
any recourse to law, and being brought to lower and lower 
wages by the employment in machine tending of women, chil- 
dren, and common laborers, the skilled craftsmen, who had 
formerly had the trades to themselves, sought a remedy in bar- 
gaining with the employer through their unions. To do this 
legally they had first to secure the repeal of the general law of 
1799 against combinations. The bitter poverty of the working 
classes, and the frequency of outbreaks in riotous strikes, made 
it clear to fair-minded people that something was necessary to 
save wage workers from the power of avaricious employers. 
Accordingly, in 1824, Parliament passed a law permitting 
workingmen to combine for the two purposes of raising wages 
and of shortening the work day. Demands on employers, 
accompanied by strikes, were at once made by existing unions, 
and by many new ones, in the confident hope that with their 
liberty to combine and strike they could soon gain their desires. 
But in this historic instance, as in many cases since, the work- 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 159 

ingmen suffered disastrous failure by reason of a period of 
slack demand and decreasing employment. 

An Early Vision of Socialism. Finding therefore that 
strikes at best were uncertain, the working people of that day, 
a large proportion of whom could not read and knew nothing of 
business, joined eagerly in Robert Owen's benevolent but im- 
possible schemes for securing to the workers all they pro- 
duced, without deduction for rent, interest, or profits. As but 
one in five men was then a voter, Parliament and the local 
governing bodies being under full control of landlords and 
capitalists, Owen had naturally no thought of a change to 
socialism through ownership of land and capital by the state. 
By some way, in his many changes of plan, the workers came to 
think that the change to collective ownership could be brought 
about at once if they only succeeded in organizing all classes 
of wage earners into a general or federal union. Under the 
influence of this hope, the spread of unionism in England in 
1833-34 was far more rapid than at any time before or since, 
extending to nearly all occupations, and including many farm 
laborers and working women. Depending upon enthusiasm 
alone, the grand movement speedily collapsed, in the failure of 
numerous strikes, in the lockout of workmen to force them to 
quit the unions, and in the imprisonment of hundreds on 
charges of conspiracy and rioting. 

Rise of the Unions Now Existing. From these varied ex- 
periences came the moderate ideas on which are based the per- 
manent unions of the present day. As many realize who have 
attempted reform in society, it was found that permanent prog- 
ress in the elevation of the working class requires all the wis- 
dom and patience of which the human mind is capable. The 
local unions of Great Britain, many of which had existed 
continuously from the eighteenth century, were gradually 
united in the leading trades, after 1820, into national organi- 
zations, managed from a central office by paid officials, and 
governed by an assembly of delegates from each of the local 
branches. The present British union of steam engine makers 
was organized in 1824, that of stonemasons and that of boiler- 
makers in 1832, and that of bookbinders in 1835. The most 
firmly established and richest union in the world, the Amal- 



i6o Getting a Living. 

gamated Society of Engineers (machinists), having in 1900 a 
membership of ^y,6y2, an income of $1,621,082, and in accumu- 
lated funds $1,974,735, — was organized in 185 1 by consoUda- 
tion of the unions in four or five related iron trades. Various 
other British unions now bearing in their titles the words 
amalgamated or united were similarly formed during the middle 
portion of the century; though separate unions of men belong- 
ing to one branch of the work still flourish in the leading indus- 
tries, and in some cases, as with the carpenters and machinists, 
two or three national unions compete for members among the 
same workers. Northumberland and Durham, and six other dis- 
tricts, have each an independent organization of unions among 
coal miners. The several unions of cotton factory operatives 
are confined to the Lancashire district, not extending to the 
Scottish mills. In many cases, in which a trade is confined to 
a few towns or to a small district, the union is a local affair, 
without a national organization. In Sheflield there are a score 
or more of such unions in the cutlery trades. Unions of this 
class have changed but little from the local trade clubs of the 
eighteenth century. The skilled trades of London have never 
been better organized than they were, under such local unions, 
between 1810 and 1820. 

Development of Trade Union Organization. The practice 
of temporarily helping with money fellow craftsm.en traveling 
in search of work existed among the earliest trade clubs. Mak- 
ing a gift from local union funds to assist strikers in another 
town or another trade had become a custom before 1810. The 
first federation of separate and independent national unions, for 
mutual assistance, existed among the unions of seven building 
trades, including laborers, during 1832-33. The first cases of 
federating the different unions of a city, by means of delegates 
composing a permanent trades council, appeared in the leading 
British cities between 1858 and i860. Temporary joint com- 
mittees of this nature had been common from the beginning 
of the century, to assist a union in a strike, to defend tmionists 
prosecuted in court, and to agitate for changes of law. Since 
1868 British trade unions of all kinds have sent delegates an- 
nually to a trade union congress, whose resolutions express the 
sentiments and demands of organized workmen, and whose 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. i6i 

parliamentary committee, elected from the able professional 
officials of the larger unions, watch legislation, and urge upon 
Parliament measures desired by the working classes. 

Laws for Protecting Wage Workers have always been 
sought by the unions as the surest means of attaining their ends 
with all employers alike. With mass meetings, and petitions to 
Parliament, the unions carried on the agitation for a legal right 
to combine, granted in 1824, and supported Lord Shaftesbury 
and other statesmen in securing the enactment of the laws 
passed between 1830 and 1850 for prohibiting payment of 
wages in truck, for regulating work in mines, and for shorten- 
ing the work day of women and children in factories. Since 
the enactment of the Reform Bill of 1867, which gave the right 
to vote to a large proportion of the working class (on a basis 
of settled homes and rent paying) , and more willingly since the 
act of 1885, which extended this right almost to the point of 
universal suffrage, a number of important laws desired by trade 
unionists have been enacted by Parliament — about fifty labor 
acts in all from 1844 to 1897. Among these were the laws of 
1869 and 1871 protecting the money of unions, which before, 
because they were in restraint of trade, had no standing in 
court, and could not prosecute a defaulting treasurer. Laws 
of greater moment were the two of 1875, one known as the 
Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, and the other as 
the Employer and Workman Act. The former removed from 
trade unions all the stigma of illegality, expressly permitting 
picketing by strikers, but drawing a strict line for it; and 
providing that no combining to commit an act was to be pun- 
ishable as conspiracy unless the same act by an individual was 
itself a criminal offense, but making criminal for one person 
the abuses likely to arise in strikes. This law was very impor- 
tant, since under widening interpretation by judges common 
law conspiracy had come to include as indictable an agreement 
by tw^o or more to compel, or bring pressure upon, any one to 
do anything against his will. By the second law, replacing 
under a significant change of name the Master and Servant Act 
of 1867, employer and employee were made equal parties to a 
contract, and imprisonment (sometimes enforced) of workmen 
for breach of contract was abolished. Other important laws 



1 62 Geting a Living. 

were the Factory Act of 1878, which codified and extended 
the many previous factory acts into an admirable system of 
regulation. The latest laws to be named here were the Work- 
men's Compensation Act of 1897, described in Chapter XXL, 
and the Factory Act of 1901, extending the regulation and fur- 
ther perfecting it. Besides the legislation by Parliament, many 
local ordinances have been adopted for the benefit of the work- 
ing class. 

Trade Unionism Long Under the Ban of the Law. Pre- 
vious to the repeal in 1814 of the general law of 1562, trade 
unions as a rule were freely tolerated, despite the decisions and 
statutes against combination, because their main objects were 
to secure enforcement of the labor law, to petition magistrates 
against reduction of wages, and to help one another in sickness 
and need. But by the end of the eighteenth century, as the 
law of 1562 fell more and more into disuse, the unions natur- 
ally depended more upon strikes, and hence incurred much 
disfavor. In 1786 two London bookbinders, who were leading 
a strike to shorten the work day from twelve to eleven hours, 
were sentenced to two years' imprisonment for conspiracy. 
Five London printers received the same sentence in 1798. 
In 1818 sentence of imprisonmicnt was carried out upon three 
leaders of a Bolton meeting of cotton mill operatives, gathered 
on suggestion of certain mill owners who desired them to 
strike against the wage cutting of competing mills. Fines or 
short terms of imprisonment were imposed on perhaps 
hundreds of unionists between 1795 and 1824. 

Imprisonment for Seven Years. After the repeal in 1824 
of the anti-combination statute of 1799, though unions and 
strikes were common, severe punishment, to check the wide- 
spreading labor movement, was occasionally imposed under the 
common law of conspiracy. In 1834 six Dorchester laborers, 
for the mere act of administering an oath, were transported to 
Australia on a sentence of six years — reduced later to four 
years. The same year, and for the same offense, in a farming 
village of Dorsetshire, four laborers, and two Methodist preach- 
ers engaged in organizing unions, were transported for seven 
years. A statute of 1859 provided that men were not to be held 
guilty of molestation for peaceably persuading others not to 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 163 

work; but in determining what was peaceable the decisions of 
judges rendered the statute of little effect. Prosecutions for 
conspiracy and intimidation continued at times down to the 
new statute of 1875, the judges widening the common law 
under the uncertain language of earlier statutes supposed at 
first to be liberal. In 185 1 the posting up of placards announc- 
ing a strike was held to be intimidation of the employers. 
Under the conspiracy act passed in 1871, containing stringent 
provisions, affecting both masters and men, to prevent molesta- 
tion, but stating that unions were not to be held illegal because 
in restraint of trade, — several gas stokers on strike were impris- 
oned for a year, and seven women were imprisoned a short 
term for saying ''Bah" to a man who had taken a striker's 
place. Many convictions then took place for use of abusive 
language. ''Almost any action taken by trade unions to induce 
a man not to accept employment at a struck shop resulted, under 
the new act, in imprisonment with hard labor."^ Conditions 
were changed by the law of 1875, which prohibited violence but 
finally settled the legality of unionism, separating it clearly 
from criminal conspiracy. From 1875 onward, trade unions 
grew in favor with the public more rapidly. During the last 
fifteen years, in Great Britain, as in America, parties and poli- 
ticians have been eager to win the favor of the enfranchised 
workingman, showing to some extent a disposition now to 
err on his side, as formerly they erred on the side of the 
employer.^ 

^Webb, page 268. 

But the Courts Meant to be Fair. Although the judges, with the middle 
and upper classes generally, were no doubt inwardly opposed to unionism, 
it must not be inferred that the decisions were unjustly biased. That they 
w^ere not is indicated by the following quotation, from an opinion given since 
the legal bias in England has been toward the workers rather than other- 
w^ise. "In a legal point of view no part of the whole story is so remarkable 
as the part played by the judges in defining, and indeed, in a sense creating, 
the offense of conspiracy. They defined it, I think, too widely; but that 
their definition was substantially right is proved by the fact that the act of 
1875 has made provision for punishing practically all the acts which they 
declared to be offenses at common law." (Sir James Stephens.) See U, ■S: 
Labor Bulletin No. '^'i. 

^The Study of Trade Unionism. Parliamentary committees have made 
some exhaustive investigations of the condition of the laboring class. Chief 



164 Getting a Living. 

Trade Unionism in America. In Boston, New York, and 
Philadelphia, by the beginning o£ the nineteenth century, there 
existed in some occupations trade unions of the same character 
and methods as those of London, organized no doubt by crafts- 
men who had come from England.^ ''The chapel," a name 
given everywhere in America to a meeting of the printers in 
an office on collective trade business, was written of by Benja- 
min Franklin as having been observed by him when he worked 
in London in 1725. Thurlow Weed belonged to a union of 
printers in New York in 1817. It is reasonably certain that a 
strike for higher wages occurred among New York bakers in 
1 741. A strike among Philadelphia shoemakers occurred in 
each of the years 1796, 1798, and 1799. In 1803 sailors in New 
York, striking for an increase of pay from $10 to $14 a month, 
^'marched around the city and compelled other seamen to leave 
their ships and join the strike."^ For every third or fourth year 
a strike is reported, up to 1830; after that time one or more for 
nearly every year. Between 1830 and 1850 there was in 
America a widespread labor movement very similar to that of 
the same period in England. There was a similarity in the 
agitation through newspapers issued by the working class; 
in the conventions and parties for political effort; in the 
attempts to establish cooperative communities, many of them, 
on both sides of the Atlantic, being promoted by Robert Owen ; 

among these were those preceding the legislation of 1824 and 1871, the in- 
vestigation in 1890 by a House of Lords committee of the sweating system, 
and the investigation in 1894 by the Royal Commission on Labor. The 
reports of these investigations fill many volumes. Fully as useful, perhaps, 
in informing the public, were the reports on trade unions published by the 
Social Science Association in i860; the report in nine volumes of an elab- 
orate investigation carried out among the London poor by Charles Booth, 
between 1886 and 1896; and the three splendid volumes on trade unionism 
by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the result of six years' labor, ending in 1897. 
From the latter was taken most of the information embodied in the above 
sketch of British trade unions. 

^An instance of the natural rise of unionism where conditions are favor- 
able, and leaders appear, was afforded lately among natives of the Samoan 
Islands, who combined and refused to work for less than a dollar a day. 

^The Sixteenth Annual Report, 1901, of the U. S. Department of Labor 
gives a list of all known strikes in this country previous to 1880, and 
detailed statistics of the strikes and lockouts between 1879 and 1901. 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 165 

in the growth of a class feehng among wage earners, in the 
spread of unionism, and in frequency of strikes ; in the failure 
or decline of unions during the hard times of 1837-40; 
and later in the final establishment, in each of many trades, of 
a permanent national union composed of local branches. The 
oldest of these, the present International Typographical Union 
of the United States and Canada, was formed in 1850. The 
iron molders' union was formed in 1859, the cigar makers' 
union in 1864, and a tot'al of twelve of the present national and 
international unions (about 120 in all) before 1880. As the 
American states, after their separation from Great Britain in 
1776, had no enforced laws fixing wages or requiring a term 
of apprenticeship, and no statutes against labor combinations, 
trade unionism and strikes were never illegal to the extent that 
they were in England. Though falling under the same common 
law of conspiracy, and being punished in a few cases as crimi- 
nal, they were less of a menace in the scattered settlements of 
America; and within bounds, not yet finally settled, they have 
been freely permitted from the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century.^ 

^Early American Strikes and the Law. The striking bakers of New 
York in 1741 were convicted of conspiracy, but it does not appear that sen- 
tence was passed upon them. In the case of the Philadelphia shoemakers in 
1806, fined $8 each and costs, it was held that any combination of workmen 
to raise their wages was a conspiracy, and as such unlawful, even though un- 
accompanied by force, threats, or intimidation. In 1829, two shoemakers of 
Franklin county, Pennsylvania, were fined for conspiracy — one $10 and the 
other $5. In 1834 the New York supreme court held that combination 
for peaceably securing an advance of wages was indictable as conspiracy. 
In 1836, in New York, twenty-one tailors were punished by fines ranging 
from $100 to $150 each. The Massachusetts supreme court's decision in 
favor of bootmakers in 1842 has long been considered as having affirmed 
the right to combine for raising wages ; but the authors of the U. S. Labor 
Department's sixteenth report think the decision was only that "the indict- 
ment as framed did not charge a conspiracy, not that the facts were insuffi- 
cient to support an indictment properly framed." However, this report 
gives no case of conviction after 1836; besides those mentioned above, it 
gives only six earlier cases of conviction. Except the Massachusetts case of 
1842, the earliest case mentioned in which union combination was held to be 
lawful was one in New York in 1867. In 1870 it was legalized in New 
York by statute. But from the early part of the century It had been gener- 
ally legalized in effect by not prosecuting. 



l66 Getting a Living. 

With the American Federation of Labor, organized in 
1 88 1, nearly all the various kinds of unions in the country are 
affiliated. Unlike the British Trade Union Congress, which 
is simply an annual meeting, its continuous activity consisting 
only of the political effort of a committee composed of head 
officials of national unions, — the American Federation main- 
tains a permanent office at the national capital, and carries on 
its work continuously upon a large scale. Its objects are to 
promote the growth and effectiveness of unionism in all occupa- 
tions ; to assist with influence and advice, and in emergencies 
with money contributions, affiliated or other unions involved in 
strikes ; and especially to influence legislation and public opin- 
ion in favor of organized labor. It now employs the entire 
time of President Samuel Gompers and of Secretary Frank 
Morrison (the former's salary being raised in 1902 from $2,100 
to $3,000, and the latter's from $1,800 to $2,500) ; the entire 
time of 15 permanently employed organizers (increased in 1902 
to 25) and from one to six months per year of the time of 39 
other organizers, besides the work of over 900 voluntary local 
organizers, who are only reimbursed for their expenses. Dur- 
ing 1902 the Federation's outlay in organizing unions was 
$36,217, not including the expenses of officials on special organ- 
izing trips, nor $4,861 spent in the work of the legislative com- 
mittee.^ In Great Britain a general organization on the plan 
of the American Federation was formed in 1899, but has not 
yet become important. 

The Knights of Labor, organized in 1869 as a secret order, 
gave up the secrecy about ten years later, and spread with great 
rapidity between 1882 and 1887, reaching a maximum member- 
ship that was variously estimated between a half and a full 
million — since declined to an estimated total of from 150,000 
to 200,000. This society differs from all other labor organiza- 
tions of importance, in that it admits wage workers of any 
occupation. In many cases it has had a local assembly com* 
posed exclusively of one trade, as of carpenters ; in other cases, 
especially in smaller towns, its assembly is composed of wage 
workers in general, various sections of the salaried and profes- 

^Membership and other statistics of unions are given at the end of this 
chapter. 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 167 

sional men being also desired as members. An all-inclusive 
miion of this class attained in England in 183 1 a membership 
or perhaps 100,000, but soon collapsed, in the separation of its 
members into the unions of their respective trades, by which 
restriction of membership the negotiating and striking were 
confined to men directly concerned, whose identity of interest 
holds them together compactly. Similar to the English move- 
ment of the thirties, the Knights of Labor in the eighties had 
vaguely defined expectations of getting rid of the employer by 
means of a grand movement in cooperation. Their enthusiasm 
led them to engage too freely in strikes, whose disastrous end- 
ing soon dispelled the illusion. During the last ten years they 
have not been aggressive, and have not attracted public atten- 
tion, the adherence of members and assemblies being weak. 
In fact Mr. Gompers speaks of the Knights of Labor as being 
now defunct.^ 

American Unionism Developed Later than that of Great 
"Britain. Only in the few larger cities of the North Atlantic 
States, during the first half of the nineteenth century, was there 

^Different Branches of a Trade in a Single Union. During the last 
few years, in some cases, that maximum pressure may be placed on an 
employer by a strike of all his men, and that workers in one department may 
be sure of aid from workers in other departments, the different sections of 
men in one industry have been united into a single union. The United 
Mine Workers, national and local, include miners, stationary engineers, 
firemen, and laborers. The United Brewery Workmen include every grade 
of workers about a brewery in one national organization, though each section 
of workers is in a separate local union. The typographical union follows 
the same policy with printing trades. Though the pressmen and the book- 
binders are in separate national unions, all the local unions of printing 
trades in a city are closely allied in a council, as is the case also in the build- 
ing trades. British amalgamated unions were formed long ago in some 
cases to include different sections of skilled men in one industry, as molders 
and pattern makers, but not the unskilled helpers. Uniting into one union, 
as the mine workers, the different sections of men in an occupation is being 
carried as far as to each section of men it proves preferable to separate 
organization of themselves alone, not being carried so far as to weaken the 
occupation's unionism as a whole by attempting to hold together men of 
wages and of interests too diverse. Perhaps the mine workers find it neces- 
sary to include all sections in their one strong body in order to have any 
unionism at all that is permanent at the many small and scattered mines; 
while the building trades, each having as a rule enough men for a strong 
union, find alliance of separate unions, for mutual assistance in strikes, to be 



i68 Getting a Living. 

a concentrated mass of people who had no prospect of rising to 
the position of employer, and who were sufficiently skilled and 
intelligent to maintain permanent unions of consequence. In 
the rapid growth of a new country there were so many business 
opportunities that comparatively few capable wage workers 
anywhere needed the help of unionism as did British workmen, 
.settled for generations in one occupation under low wages. 
American unions have grown up chiefly in the development of 
large scale industry since 1870. In many American industrial 
centres unionism is now perhaps as strong as in the centres of 
England; but in the United States as a whole, together with 
Canada, whose development in unionism is about the same, 
the total membership of trade unions, owing to large agricul- 
tural area, has been, until 1902, considerably smaller than that 
of Great Britain, whose population is not quite half that of the 
United States and Canada.^ 



preferable to amalgamation of different trades into one union alone. To 
unionize the less skilled section, the more skilled must make concessions to 
them, but in return the less skilled do not take the places of the more skilled 
when the latter strike, though an active spirit of unionism is necessary to 
prevent taking advantage of the opportunity to rise to better positions. 
Ordinarily, experience has shown, it is advisable to have a separate union 
for each of a trade's sections that is so different from others as to require 
separate rules of its own. In this way the risk and cost of raising a section's 
pay may be taken by its workers alone, and its interests are not in danger 
of being over-ridden by majorities composed of larger sections. 

^Statistics of British Trade Unions. At the beginning of 1902, in Great 
Britain and Ireland, there were 1,236 trade unions, counting all the local 
branches of a national organization as one union, with a total membership 
of 1,922,780, increasing in two years from 1,803,897. Mining unions had a 
membership of 514,536, metal working and ship building trades 334,913, 
building trades 248,648, and textile trades 219,256. Many of the 1,236 are 
local unions in one city, not connected with a national union. One 
hundred of the principal unions, with a membership of 1,161,226, had in 
1901 an income of $10,032,295, expenditures of $8,057,148, and funds at the 
end of the year of $20,253,964. There were 107 federations of separate 
unions in a connected trade, such as mining or as textile working, and 181 
trades councils. Owing mainly to industrial depression, total membership 
fell from 1,502,358 in 1892 to 1,407,836 in 1895. The beginning in 1901 of 
the backward flow of the wave of prosperity is indicated by slight decrease 
of membership in several trade groups, and by a total increase in 1901 of 
only i2,i66, against 106,717 In 1900. But financial strength rises fast, the 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 169 

In Australia and New Zealand, in view of their radical 
legislation in favor of wage earners, including minimum wage 
laws and preference for unionists in compulsory arbitration 
awards, unionism seems to have much more political power 
than in any other countries. Yet Mr. H. D. Lloyd found 
during his visit of 1899 ^^^^ Australasian unions were not 

funds per member of the 100 unions being $17.44 in 1901 against $15.88 in 
1900 and only $8.72 in 1892. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 45.) 

American Statistics. With the American Federation of Labor there 
were affiliated in June, 1903, the following unions: National and inter- 
national unions, 107 ; state federations, 28 ; city central bodies, or local trades 
councils, 535; federal labor unions, and independent local unions, neither 
class being connected with a national union, 1,872. The federal unions are 
local unions composed of men in different trades, neither of which is suffi- 
ciently numerous in the town to form a union of its own, a separate union 
being formed by each as soon as practicable. The 107 national and inter- 
national unions are composed of about 14,000 local subordinate branch 
unions. During eleven months, to October i, 1902, 3,500 new local unions 
yvere chartered, with a membership of not less than 300,000. The number 
of unionists in the country has probably trebled since the business depression 
ended in 1898. Growth has been most rapid within the last two years. The 
membership of all these various unions now aggregates perhaps two millions, 
that of the national and international unions reaching perhaps a million and 
three-quarters, including with this number, and with the grand total, four- 
teen national unions not affiliated with the Federation, and counting the 
Canadian members, whose inclusion is the reason for the use of the 
word international. The Federation includes a few branch local unions 
(39 in 1897) of the British Amalgamated Society of Engineers and about as 
many branches of the British Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and 
Joiners. The only other important labor organization, that is not 
included in the above enumeration, is that of the Knights of Labor, 
w^hose reported membership of about 200,000 is regarded as mainly nominal. 
There are published in the United States and Canada about 250 weekly and 
monthly papers devoted to the cause of labor, many of them being official 
organs of unions. A number of these, such as the American Federationist 
of Washington, and the Typographical Journal of Indianapolis, are very 
creditable magazines. The above statistics are mainly taken from the 
American Federation's latest reports. The United States Department of 
Labor has not yet gathered statistics of unions as does the British depart- 
ment. The highest salary paid by a union is $5,000, which, it is understood, 
is paid to the national president of each of the leading railway brotherhoods, 
the engineers, the firemen, and the conductors. The next highest salary is 
paid by the marine engineers, $2,400. 

The Largest Union in the World is that of the United Mine Workers 
of America, with a membership now nearing 300,000 inncreased from 43,000 



170 Getting a Living. 

specially strong in themselves apart from the political influence 
of workingmen voters, having never recovered from the disas- 
trous failure of their great strike of 1890, which probably sur- 
passed all others in territory covered, in number of occupations 
called out, and in completeness of the suspension of industry. 
Since then the unions have relied chiefly on legislation, and 
very successfully. 

In Continental Europe— notably during the last several 

since 1897. The British Miners' Federation is about as large, but it is an 
alliance, not a single body. The American Brotherhood of Carpenters, in 
1902, had 94,800 members, in 900 local unions. The British Amalgamated 
Engineers, in March, 1903, numbered 93,693. The largest American local 
union is that of New York printers, the Big Six, numbering about 5,500. 
The London union is about as large. Carpenters and cigar makers do not 
organize the trade in a city into a single union ; the latter have in New York 
about a dozen locals. 

In Nearly Every Kind of Wage Working unions now flourish. There 
are many of bootblacks, newsboys, cooks, and waiters, some of stablemen, 
janitors, floor walkers, and post-oflice clerks, a number of new ones among 
farm laborers in the middle West, and now the organizers are reporting as 
"under way," or as lately organized, unions of public school teachers, insur- 
ance agents, washerwomen, and hired girls. In scores of cities and towns 
the workers not yet organized are an insignificant remnant. Alton, 111., 
claims to be the strongest union city, with 70 per cent of its voters in unions. 
Chicago is said to have 525 local unions, with over 300,000 members. But 
doubtless thousands of the new local unions will drop to pieces when the 
enthusiasm subsides and labor demand slackens. In 1901, before the recent 
growth of membership, 48 per cent in Minnesota of all workers in manufac- 
turing were in unions, and in New York 39 per cent. In a few trades the 
percentage reaches 90 for the whole country. Hence, the objection is unten- 
able that since only 2,000,000 out of the country's total of 20,000,000 wage 
workers are in unions the latter cannot rightfully claim to represent their 
respective trades. Where it is effective the union generally includes three- 
fourths of the men in a trade in the town, and in many cases it includes all. 
Moreover, workers not yet organized hold generally the views of unionism. 

Temporary Unions. United action to raise wages, or to remove griev- 
ances, is often taken successfully by a small body of workmen not formally 
organized. If they all agree in the demand they are a union in effect. 
Taking the places of men thus striking is considered ratting, though not so 
objectionable as if their strike were sanctioned by a regular union, since they 
are less likely to be in the right when acting unadvised. In some large 
American mining districts there are no unions, yet small strikes by a body 
of men at one mine are not uncommon. Such action is the first stage of 
unionism, and shows conditions to be favorable for permanent organization. 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 171 

years at Barcelona, Marseilles, in the Belgian cities, and at the 
French coal mines — great strikes occur, involving often sup- 
pression by military forces ; but trade unions as a rule have not 
been strongly established or influential. The riotous outbreaks 
in 1902 among tens of thousands of farm laborers in Galicia in 
Austria-Hungary, and the many riotous strikes during that and 
ihe preceding year in Russia, suppressed usually by soldiers, 
were not like the ordinary American contest between a union 
and an employer, but were rebellious outbreaks of unorganized 
men against intolerable conditions, both industrial and political, 
similar to Wat Tyler's rebellion in the fourteenth century in 
England. In the national and international conventions of 
Continental unions the custom has been to agitate for new laws, 
not to plan for supporting demands by strikes. Though in 
France, Belgium, and Germany there are now many unions 
following the British and American methods of self-help, the 
main effort of Continental unionism has generally been to over- 
turn the present industrial order and establish socialism — or 
at least to promote a transition toward socialism by urging 
the labor legislation that Continental nations have been enacting 
in recent years, in the line of taxing employers and the state 
for old age pensions and accident insurance. (Chapter XXI.) 
The Reasons for the Backwardness of Continental Union- 
ism include the following. First, by reason of disorder from 
wars, and of lack of capital, factory production with machinery 
arose on the Continent a half century later than in England. 
Unionism is of little use, and generally is impossible, while 
workmen are scattered in small shops, on a social plane almost 
equal to that of the employer, and with chances of rising to his 
position. In Germany the hand-working, small-shop industries 
still survive to a far greater extent than in England and Amer- 
ica. Second, admission of the middle and lower classes as vot- 
ers to participate in government came later than in England; 
and even yet the government, being less under the people's con- 
trol, and being more exposed to socialistic outbreaks into vio- 
lence, does not hesitate to use its power to curb striking and 
trade unionism further than by simply maintaining order. 
Third, the practice widely prevails of tying workmen to their 
employers by means of aid funds and other welfare institu- 



172 Getting a Living. 

tions. Such influences are not conducive to the independent 
spirit necessary for aggressive unionism. By natural temper- 
ament perhaps, and by the experience of centuries under abso- 
lutism in government, and under paternalism both in govern- 
ment and industry, the Continental peoples have not developed 
far the unionist's spirit of self-help. 

The New Trade Unionism is a name applied, chiefly in 
Great Britain, to the united movement of all labor organizations 
— in politics, and by mutual assistance in strikes and boycotts — 
toward improving the condition of wage workers in general. 
This united effort, though always existing to some extent in 
political action by unions, and in mutual aid and sympathy, was 
made prominent in Great Britain at the tim^e of the London 
dock strike of 1889, and in America several years earlier when 
the Knights of Labor united all trades into one union. It has 
been continued since with increasing strength by the American 
Federation of Labor, under which all working class sentiment 
is effectively united in politics and mutual assistance ; while in 
the other industrial countries the trade unions are now zeal- 
ously united to promote in every way the interests of their class 
as a whole. In the older unionism the disposition was for each 
trade to work for its own advancement alone, and not to unite 
in general movements, — having little concern for unskilled 
laborers, for whose organization, generally neglected until 
recent years, the federations now make special efforts. The 
railway brotherhoods are least affected by the new spirit, not 
being affiliated with the American Federation, never going out 
now on sympathetic strike, to assist in strikes among other 
workers, and being kept conservative by high wages, by posses- 
sion of large benefit funds, and by the public necessity of avoid- 
ing strikes in railway operation. The new unionism is a form 
of effort for which capacity was developed in the narrower 
and simpler activities of the old. The chief danger to unionism, 
serious at times under the old but far more so under the new, 
is the seductiveness of the siren socialism, whose vision of an 
impossible sharing of wealth equally, of getting without earn- 
ing, and of one man's being as good as another without regard 
to his character or his service value — will perhaps always be in 
the future, as for so long in the past, a natural delusion for the 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 173 

ignorant or unbalanced mind. Socialistic rhetoric sways many 
a trades council, often proving a disturbing element in the 
American Federation's annual convention, to be sidetracked 
for business that nature has not made forever impossible ; and 
it is a source of similar disturbance in the British Trade Union 
Congress. Yet it is probably true, somewhat as labor leaders 
claim, that the new unionism, having the confidence of all 
grades of workers, might now do more than any other force 
to bring to pass, politically and educationally, the vast poten- 
tialities of human progress. To reach great achievements it 
needs only to turn away from the vagaries hitherto so attractive, 
and to acquire the wisdom to discern what can be and ought to 
be done. 

Benefit Features of Trade Unions. In 1900 the Brother- 
hood of Locomotive Engineers, with a membership of 35,010, 
paid $810,750 to members in death and accident benefits, and 
had $53,714,250 of insurance outstanding. Several of these 
brotherhoods maintain each a strike fund of $100,000 — little 
used in late years — and have each nearly a half million dollars 
in total funds on hand. In some cases, with British unions, 
possession of benefit funds, which are there maintained by 
most of the unions on an elaborate scale, (reaching about 
$2,000,000 with the Amalgamated Engineers), is said to have 
caused tyranny by union officers, a member's payments of dues 
being forfeited if he disobeys official orders. But the benefit 
features are important to hold the union together, to make it 
careful in striking, and to maintain discipline over members — 
a matter in which some unions have been very defective, as 
shown by disorderly strikes. Especially useful are benefit 
features in England, where under low wages fraternal helpful- 
ness in the union gives poor members more value in insurance 
than they could get otherwise for the same money cost. The 
lack of safety in union benefits, since the funds may all be 
used to support strikes, is outweighed by extra advantages of 
more permanent unionism, in improving wages, in getting 
work, and in development of character through self-help. Some 
of the newer unions in England, since 1889, have gone to the 
one extreme of having no benefit features, existing simply for 
striking. The tendency with such is soon to go to pieces. On 



174 Getting a Living. 

the other hand, there have been periods when leading British 
unions went to the other extreme, becoming mere friendly 
societies, and practically giving up firm bargaining with em- 
ployers, for fear of dissipating the funds in a strike.^ The 
rapid decline of the Knights of Labor, between 1886 and 1894, 
was due not only to that society's inherent defect of aiming to 

^Some Figures of Benefit Payments. As American unions grow older 
their benefit features are increasing and spreading. The cigar makers and 
railway men lead in this respect, the latter by reason of the danger of 
accident in their occupation. As a rule American unions pay at least the 
burial expenses of a deceased member. A number of them now allow a 
small weekly sum for a time to members out of work. For this benefit, 
which is general and important in England, the one local printers' union of 
New York city (membership about 5,500) paid out $32,489 in 1898. In 
1896, a year of great depression, the cigar makers' union for the whole 
country, with a membership of 28,074, P^id benefits as follows: Sickness 
benefit, $5 for each of 13 weeks, $109,208 ; death benefit, $50 to $550, 2 to 15 
years' membership, $78,768 ; traveling benefit (a loan to be repaid), $33,076; 
out-of-work benefit, limited to $54 a year, $175,767 ; strike benefit, $27,446 — 
$5 a week for first 16 weeks, and then $3 a week until the strike is ended. 
In 1900 the out-of-work payment was only $23,897, but that for strikes was 
$137,823. The regular dues in the cigar makers' union are 30c. a week, 
besides some occasional assessments (raising the total during some large 
strikes to $1.00 a week) ; the disbursements in 1896 were $24.73 per member, 
coming partly from the surplus, which was $503,829 in 1893, but only 
$194,240 in 1898, at the close of the depression. In printers' unions the 
total dues are about $7 to $8 a year, where the local union does not (as in 
New York) add materially to the few and small benefits generally paid in 
this trade. The union with highest prevailing dues, 45c. a week, is the 
German- American Typographia. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 22.) All the 
benefit payments of printers' unions, excepting the payment for support of 
men on strike, are in the hands of the local union, not being paid from the 
funds of the national body as in the case of the cigar makers. Generally, 
especially in the smaller cities, the printers' union pays only the death 
benefit, $50 or $100 at the death of a member or his wife; though a unionist 
out of work and in great need is sometimes aided with a small collection in 
money from members, or with a day's work in a member's place. In fact, 
only two strictly American unions have an out-of-work benefit paid from 
the national body's funds, and only about a dozen have such a benefit for 
sickness. 

Pensions for Aged Members. In 1902 the locomotive engineers ar- 
ranged to pension old and disabled members. Only a rich union of well 
paid men could maintain a safe pension system. Little in this respect has 
yet been done by unions anywhere. The printers' union supports in Colo- 
rado the Childs-Drexel home for disabled members; three of the railway 



Trade Unions: Their Origin and History. 175 

unite in one body separate trades of diverse interest, nor to its 
loss of many ill-advised strikes, but was due especially to its 
effort, after such experience, to abolish strikes altogether, and 
to depend on conciliation and on socialistic politics. It melted 
away in its contest for leadership with the American Federa- 
tion, under the latter's solid policy of having separate and inde- 
pendent unions joined only by federation, and of having as the 

brotherhoods are preparing to establish jointly a similar institution. Of 
British unions 38 pay a small superannuation benefit — the carpenters $2.80 
a week for life to an incapacitated member above 50 who has been in the 
union 25 years. In America the carpenters and the pattern makers arranged 
some years ago to accumulate for such a benefit. There has been little attempt 
by unions to make the dues larger in proportion to the age of persons join- 
ing; though the cigar makers, whose union benefits are unusually large, do 
not allow sick and out-of-work benefits to persons joining when past fifty, 
or when afflicted with chronic disease, and several other unions with large 
benefits make similar distinctions. A union wants all men in the trade as 
members, in order to bargain effectively on wages and conditions of work, 
and hence cannot follow closely the principles that underlie the justice and 
safety of insurance corporations. The greater gain in benefits by the weak 
is not sufficient to repel the strong, and may even increase in some cases the 
latter's sense of fraternity. It is to solidify the union for the main function 
of bargaining with the employer that the benefit features are most valuable. 
As insurance they are useful, but secondary. Yet while preparedness for 
striking counts first in importance, strike benefits are fortunately not a 
leading expense. During 5 years to 1898, a period of strikes large and 
numerous, 100 leading British unions paid out an average of but $7.66 per 
member for trade disputes, against $24.11 for benefit features, and $6.87 for 
management. Of the total payments of all New York state unions in 1894, 
only 17 per cent was for strikes. In March, 1903, the British Amalgamated 
Engineers, with a total of 93,693 members, paid benefits as follows: For 
unemployment, to 3,871 persons; for sickness, to 2,448; for superannuation, 
to 4,287. 

Large Fund for Strikers. The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen 
voted in 1903 to increase its strike fund from $100,000 to $300,000. The 
United Mine Workers have had on hand for several years, available for 
strikes, a fund of $1,000,000. For the anthracite coal strike of 1902 the 
national convention assessed some classes of members at work 10 per cent 
of their wages and others $1 a week — the total of relief funds gathered, 
including contributions from other unions and the public, being about 
$1,800,000. Possession by the Mine Workers of a large fund, not utilized 
with benefit features, is an inducement to strike, and necessitates great cau- 
tion in officials. But striking has properly been the main business of this 
union since it became strong in 1898, and will be while business continues 
brisk and wrong conditions of labor remain to be rectified. 



176 Getting a Living. 

main object, supported in the last resort by strikes, such bar- 
gaining with employers as will secure for workers the largest 
return now, and the greatest development for the future — seek- 
ing reform of society meanwhile as far as practicable, but not 
waiting for rights and benefits until such reform comes. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
THE NECESSITY FOR TRADE UNIONISM. 

Few Can Hope to Become Employers. Perhaps fully nine- 
tenths of the wage workers are not born with sufficient capa- 
bility to become employers, or useful independent producers, 
under the present system of large scale industry; and if the 
capability could be acquired there would be no place for them. 
Society needs them, and will pay for their service, only where 
they are — working by the hundreds in large factories, under 
the direction of a few employers. Only thus can there be pro- 
duced the present abundant supply of useful things. Oppo- 
nents of trade unionism object rightly to the drawing of a sharp 
line between the working class and the employing class, urging 
that every worker ought to strive to rise in life. So he ought, 
but this idea belonged rather to the small industry system of 
former times. Whether we would have it so or not, the mass 
of the people are kept in the condition of wage workers by an 
impassable barrier erected by nature. They are not to be 
blamed for being what they are. 

Workers Are Not Free to Reject Proffered Terms. In the 
industrial centres of America, and everywhere in densely popu- 
lated Europe, few people have easy access to land, or the money 
and knowledge to better their condition by moving away, or 
the choice of anything but to continue in the work they are 
doing. Being held to this by nothing less than physical want 
but slightly removed, the average wage worker is not free, 
when standing alone, to hold back for better terms than the 
employer offers. His labor time, like a perishable commodity, 
must be sold at once or be lost forever; besides the effect of 
privation to bring sickness to himself and family, and the effect 
of idleness, when in want, to sap his self-confidence and weaken 
his efficiency. 

- 12 (177) 



178 Getting a Living. 

Neither is the Employer Free to close his factory without 
loss. His customers would leave him, his plant deteriorate, 
while interest and rent would continue unchanged. But the 
simple money loss he would incur from stoppage, with his 
family well provided for, is a small matter compared with the 
physical suffering hanging over the wage workers. He knows 
that when they are unorganized they cannot remain away from 
work long enough to cause him a loss of much consequence; 
and he can therefore set his own price for their labor, as can 
the buyer of a commodity not competed for and about to spoil. 

Is Not His Self-interest Sufficient to insure fair treatment 
of his employees — wages as high as the business will afford? 
He knows that to obtain good work from them they must be 
well supported and contented. Unfortunately, his opinion is 
likely to differ from theirs and even from that of society. This 
self-interest did not lead the owner of field slaves, as a rule, to 
provide for them much better than for animals. He preferred 
dull labor when good living and teaching made slaves "sassy." 
Along or near this level of coarse subsistence, wages have always 
moved, in times of ordinary demand for labor, among people 
unprepared to move away or change occupation, and not united 
for bargaining. In the farming districts of Europe, and among 
women workers in American cities, this law of wages is just as 
true to-day, with all our civilization, as it was a century ago. 
To such pay the name "natural wages" was fittingly applied by 
the old economists. It is nature, not the worker's or the em- 
ployer's choice, that prevents wages from falling lower than 
will keep the worker's family alive, and that thus maintains the 
supply of labor the employers must have. Living in virtual 
serfdom, therefore, taking the bare support the employer allows, 
must inevitably be the lot of the working classes, without trade 
unions, where a living is not easily to be obtained by settling 
on vacant land, where there is no rapid growth of industry to 
make an exceptional demand for labor, and where intelligence, 
thrift, and readiness to move have not yet become general. 
Under such conditions very few employers, to increase profits, 
would ever be sufficiently humane or far-sighted to follow any 
other policy as to wages than to put them at the lowest point ; 
and if many employers voluntarily paid more, the workers 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 179 

would not have the discipline of bargaining, which in its effect 
to develop manhood is as valuable as the good wages them- 
selves. 

To Enable the Worker to Bargain, in the sale of his labor, 
with a measure of the employer's freedom to contract or not — 
the necessity for this, in order to escape degradation, is the 
impregnable rock on which trade unionism is founded. In full 
view of the abuses of unionism, one may reverently say, as of 
human government, which also has been abused flagrantly, 
that the trade union is an institution of God. He created the 
unions by making it the desire and duty of every normal human 
being to develop his physical, mental, and moral faculties, and 
by so ordering conditions that only through organization can 
wage workers now secure the adequacy of support and the 
independence that self-development requires. By uniting into 
a union they raise funds with which to support men while hold- 
ing back their labor for better terms ; and by acting in a body 
their refusal to enter the wage contract brings upon the em- 
ployer a pressure approaching that which his refusal brings 
upon them. 

The Employer is Not Worse Than Other People. Those 
unionists and socialists who declaim about the plutocracy of 
his class are excited, being led by feeling instead of by judg- 
ment. He does only what all do who buy as cheaply as they 
can. When a wage worker saves a little money with difficulty, 
and starts a small business for himself, he is likely to feel com- 
pelled to drive harder bargains with his employees than do men 
brought up in the employing class, who, if wealthy, often feel 
much responsibility for the welfare of those working for them. 
The small subcontractor is noted for sweating his employees, 
in whose class he recently belonged, and above whom he has 
risen but little. The skilled cotton spinners and shipbuilders 
in England, who hire their own helpers, do not encourage them 
to unionize. Such helpers of the striking anthracite miners in 
Pennsylvania were said by the latter's opponents to be treated 
in a way approaching sweating. In 1901 about fifty polishers 
and platers in Rochester, N. Y., whose strike against the 
employer was settled by his giving them their work as an in- 
corporated cooperative company of contractors (starting with 



i8o Getting a Living, 

34 members, soon reduced to 21) departed so far from the 
union spirit that they adopted piece work, hired boys wherever 
profitable, and toiled thirteen hours a day, prospering greatly 
thereby.^ Perhaps the typical union man is not well fitted to 
succeed as an employer ; because in his fraternal readiness to 
deal generously with the workers he may neglect the employer's 
part in the process, which is by all just means to get out a 
product for less cost than its selling price — usually a difficult 
task. The rights of employees should be looked out for by 
themselves. Unionism enables them to do this. Paying more 
for work or for goods than one has to pay is giving in charity, 
and those thus helped tend to become pauperized. Unionism 
for the mass is the most effective self-help. 

Unionism Did Not Arise Until It Was Needed. Before the 
time of the factory system in England it was only in a few of 
the skilled trades that the employer was active enough to push 
his men unduly, and thus to drive them to self-defense through 
trade clubs, which these skilled men alone among workers had 
the intelligence to maintain. Unskilled men outside the guild 
monopolies had a bare living, and improvement in their condi- 
tion was seldom thought of, by themselves or by others, yet the 
slow, dull, old-fashioned methods of labor saved them from 
worse injury than the poverty their ancestors had lived under 
for generations. Though the fixing of wages by magistrates, 
so far as enforced, was done with a view to the interests of the 
employer, it is believed to have been some protection to the 
laborers ; but their main security in the enjoyment of a tolerable 
living was afforded by public opinion and custom, which in all 
countries to-day protect from reduction of wages many com- 
mon workers who might have to submit. 

Effects of the New Factory System. The invention of 
machinery changed the easy-going condition of English in- 
dustry. Indeed, some years earlier, before the middle of the 
eighteenth century, the raising of industry to a larger scale, 
by capitalist employers hiring a number of men, had begun to 
lengthen the working day, and to increase the pressure under 
which labor was carried on. When common laborers and 
women entered the factory, they passed into new or changed 

^The Outlook, Feb. 21, 1903. 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. i8i 

industries, which were not regulated in their favor by consid- 
erate custom. They had then to keep up with nerveless steel 
driven by steam, and were subject to an active, driving em- 
ployer, with large capital at risk, whose gain was increased, in 
his own thought at least, by every penny he could take off their 
wages, and by every additional half hour per day he could exact 
from their tired bodies. The average employer's self-interest 
is not enlightened, but short-sighted. The practice of trying to 
get the most for one's money, usually proper enough, is easily 
carried to a self-injuring extreme in buying labor. Short- 
sighted self-interest, above which few employers can rise, con- 
siders simply one's own immediate gain, without concern as to 
need for good v/orkers in the future, without active sympathy 
for dependent people, and without thought of the welfare of 
society. Good men are strongly tempted to gain in this way 
when the power is all on their side. 

Competition is Not to be Trusted in Buying Labor. If 
wages, hours, and other conditions of labor were left to be 
settled wholly by competition, the labor power to which a living 
human being is inseparably attached would tend to be treated as 
the dead commodities coal and lumber, which a manufacturer 
rightly buys as cheaply as he can, but in whose purchase, unlike 
the case of labor, he possesses no undue advantage over the 
seller. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century in 
England, before trade unions had developed strength, this 
lowest price at which labor could be bought was just enough 
food, air, and rest to keep the laborer alive and able to v/ork. 
Without united action, each workman competing with all other 
workmen and looking out for himself alone, no one could 
demand more whose work could be done by another standing 
ready to accept the miserable living offered. If in one city 
many new factories made work plentiful for a while, laborers 
scarce and wages higher, people working for the low wages 
elsewhere were usually too ignorant to learn of the better field, 
and often too poor to move if they had learned. Their natural 
immobility had been confirmed by a law of Queen Elizabeth's 
reign prohibiting poor people from moving out of their home 
parish, its object being to keep them from flocking to places 
where poor relief was largest. 



1 82 Getting a Living. 

The Standard Set by the Worst Employers. Humane and 
far-seeing employers, discerning the danger of loss from degra- 
dation of the workers and the consequent lowering of their 
efficiency, feared to pay better wages, require fewer hours, or 
furnish work rooms with better light and air ; because if they 
did so they were in danger of being driven from business by 
hard-hearted, unscrupulous employers underselling them with 
goods produced at lower cost by withholding from workmen all 
these benefits.^ As the worst employers did, all had to do, or 
engage in competition against odds. It is not strange that the 
condition of the laboring class became shocking. Though 
factory production was a new business, and machinery clumsy 
compared with that of the present day, markets were some- 
times glutted, prices fell, and competition among manufacturers 
became perhaps as sharp as in recent times. The enormous 
profits they had realized before the fall of prices whetted their 
avarice, and they tried to regain these profits by lowering 
wages, and by running their machinery faster and more hours 
per day. 

Pitiable Condition of Factory Children. Not only men 
and women, but little boys and girls down to eight years and 
less, labored with dusty cotton, in stifling rooms, twelve to 
fifteen hours at a time.^ In some cases, when one set of children 
arose from sleep, their beds were immediately occupied, with- 
out airing or cooling, by another set of children, whose day's 
or night's work had just ended. Whipping of children, to make 
them work, was common, and dashing of cold water in their 

^Protest by Employers Against Starvation Wages. In 1819 fourteen 
Lancashire manufacturers, in a signed declaration, expressed their regret 
that they had been compelled by the action of a few competitors to lower 
wages, and condemned any further reduction. Twenty-five of the leading 
calico printing firms appended an approval to the protest, and stated that 
"the system of paying such extremely low wages for manufacturing labor 
is injurious to the trade at large." The same year the ribbon manufacturers 
of Coventry subscribed <£i 6,000 to enable the weavers' union to hold all the 
manufacturers to the list of wages agreed on. These protests and eflforts of 
the better employers were in vain. Wages were reduced, and strikes oc- 
curred at many places. (Webb's History, page 84.) 

^During the earlier years of factory industry many children were obtained 
from the workhouse or poor authorities, who sometimes paid manufacturers 
a bonus for taking a child away from public support. 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 183 

faces to keep them awake when working at night. One case of 
suicide is mentioned, that of a boy twelve years old, who 
drowned himself to escape factory life. Often the children's 
food consisted of coarse bread dipped in melted lard or fat pork 
grease.^ 

Selfishness Did Not Yield Until It Was Compelled. Phy- 
sicians saw that the factory population would soon become dull 
and short-lived, weakening the nation. Yet the struggle of the 
laboring classes themselves was the chief force in bringing 
about better conditions. Doing continually all they could by 
means of contributions to enable workmen to hold back their 
labor or seek other positions, the unions spent many thousands 
of pounds from their scanty earnings in appeals to the courts 
for enforcement of old labor laws (page 158), in getting up 
petitions to Parliament for new laws, and in agitating to arouse 
public opinion in their favor. Not only the employers, but the 
upper and middle classes in general, except a few philanthropic 
men of influence, and worse.still, the political economists as a 
body, who thought competition ought to be unrestricted with 
labor as with commodities — strongly opposed the laws enacted 
to remedy the abuses— the law of 1824 permitting combina- 
tion, and the later laws prohibiting the employment of women 
in mines and of young children in factories, limiting the work 
day for children and women, requiring factories to be properly 
warmed, lighted, and ventilated, and dangerous places to be 
enclosed. A notable contribution to the literature of factory 
reform was Mrs. Browning's pathetic poem, The Cry of the 
Children, which widely affected public opinion.^ 

^Gilman, in "A Dividend to Labor," gives a good brief account of the 
hardships of the early factory workers. 

2Harsh Repression of Unionism. "Strikes were met, not by redress or 
sympathy, but by an outburst of prosecutions and sentences of more than 
usual ferocity. The common law and ancient statutes were ruthlessly used 
to supplement the combination acts, often by strained constructions. . . . The 
workers, on attempting some spasmodic preparations for organized political 
agitation, were further coerced, in 1819, by the infamous Six Acts, which at 
one blow suppressed practically all public meetings, enabled the magistrate 
to search for arms, subjected all working class publications to the crushing 
staimp duty, and rendered more stringent the law relating to seditious libels. 
The whole system of repression . , . culminated at this time in a tyranny 



184 Getting a Living. 

One Workman Standing Alone Was Helpless in the fierce 
rivalry of employers, who selfishly and heedlessly urged the 
then popular doctrine of laissez faire — that best industrial con- 
ditions for all classes result from a letting alone — from per- 
mitting unrestrained competition, among workmen to get posi- 
tions as well as among employers to sell goods. The wage 
worker had to take the living offered or at once become a 
pauper. The power was all on the other side. Happily, not 
only for those suffering work people, and for the welfare of 
England, but for all future civilization, the one right idea pre- 
vailed. It was seen that the trouble was caused by the man 
who took the place of the worker refusing to submit. If no 
person would take a place thus vacated, an employer might be 
induced by one needed workman to pay him more wages, or 
to give him a better lighted place in which to labor. If he might 
do this for the sake of the profit yielded to him by one man's 
work, what would he not do for the sake of the profit obtained 
from the work of all the people in his factory? The modern 
labor union was therefore developed. Its simple and sufficient 
principle is that to retain a force of laborers necessary for carry- 
ing on his business, an employer will hear and grant their 
proper demands when no others can be induced to take their 
places if they leave him. 

In Union There is Strength. By uniting themselves into 
brotherhoods of different trades, all the union workmen in 
England had a chance to learn what the ablest among their 

not exceeded by any of the monarchs of the Holy Alliance." (Webb's 
History, page 85.) In this quotation there is probably some exaggeration. 

Employers Not Prosecuted for Combination. "The 'tacit but constant' 
combination of employers to depress wages, to which Adam Smith refers, 
could not be reached by this law. Nor was there any disposition on the 
part of the magistrates or the judges to find the masters guilty, even in cases 
of flagrant or avowed combination. No one prosecuted the master cutlers 
who in 1814 openly formed the Sheffield Mercantile and Manufacturing 
Union, having for its main rule that no merchant or manufacturer should 
pay higher prices for any article of Sheffield make than were current in the 
preceding year, with a penalty of £100 for each contravention of this illegal 
agreement. During the whole epoch of repression, whilst thousands of 
journeymen suffered for the crime of combination, there is absolutely no case 
on record in which an employer was punished for the same offense." 
(Webb, page 64.) 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 185 

number had observed and reasoned out as to ways of bettering 
the laborer's hard lot. National and district officials of unions 
instructed and encouraged the local branches, by means of 
frequent visits, and through their official newspapers. When 
to enforce demands a workman refused to accept an offer of 
insufficient wages, he was not then dependent for a living while 
idle upon the pittance he himself possessed, but had a claim 
on a support fund raised from all the members of his union in 
the entire country, and supplemented in time of a strike with 
contributions from other unions. Workmen in all the skilled 
trades gradually learned by experience that in union there is 
strength. When divided they were helpless — quickly reduced 
to want, and wholly unable to contend against the employer's 
resources of wealth, influence, and superior intelligence. 

Unionism Judged by its Fruits. Labor leaders claim that 
the great improvement during the nineteenth century in the 
condition of the working classes was caused mainly by trade 
unionism. Their opponents say this improvement was a part 
of the general progress of humanity, and would have come if 
unionism had never arisen. Which claim is correct? That of 
the unionists has a considerable basis in truth. The vast in- 
crease of society's supplies, through invention of machinery, 
fell at first to the higher classes. After factory production 
became the rule, from 1790 to 1840, the condition of the British 
working class was decidedly worse than before. Their labor 
was harder, and their living scarcer. However large the 
product of a factory worker, the average employer paid him no 
more than he had to pay, and this was a slender support. Over 
much of the industrial field the case is practically the same to- 
day, despite the present perfection of machinery, and the 
humane sentiments of modern society. Among trades not well 
unionized, in coal regions and factory towns, and in scores of 
occupations in large cities, especially the work of women, there 
are to-day millions of people, including the workers' depend- 
ents, who live almost as near the line of physical want and 
exhaustion as did the working classes of 1830. This is true 
of America as well as of Europe, though not to the same 
extent ; and perhaps without considering the necessary mini- 
mum support of to-day as larger than that of the earlier time. 



1 86 Getting a Living. 

So far as the present necessary minimum is larger, it is 
probably balanced by the greater intensity of effort now re- 
quired. 
Wage Workers Must Demand More of the Product, in 

higher wages, as it is increased with improving machinery, or 
the extra portion will pass first to the employers in larger 
profit, and later, with increasing output, it will pass in falling 
price to consumers. So little of a particular product may be 
consumed by the workers who make it that its lower price is to 
them no appreciable advantage. But their demand for higher 
wages the employer can and usually does disregard unless they 
are united. Among only a part of the workers, and for short 
periods, in the industrial world of the last eighty years, have 
there been such opportunities for other work as materially to 
raise wages without united demand. In many occupations it 
seems true, therefore, both in England and in America, that the 
practical doubling of w^ages since 1840, both in money and in 
goods consumed, has been mainly due to trade unionism. 
Among wholly unorganized workers, as a rule, whether 
in trades changed by machinery or not, the increase of pay per 
amount of muscular and nervous exhaustion has undoubtedly 
been below the increase in the trades well unionized. How- 
ever, in America, among many sections of workers and in many 
districts, wages have risen high from the workers' demand 
expressed not in unionism but in individual readiness to go to 
other places or to competing employers — alternatives arising 
from opening of new regions and from growth of industry. 
Wages have also been nearly doubled for not a few workers in 
France, where people are slow to move for the sake of better 
pay, where unionism was not strong until lately, and where 
growth of industry has not been rapid. Perhaps, under the 
considerate regard of the French employer for his work people, 
their demand when not closely unionized has sufficed to secure 
in wages a share of an increase of product.^ 

^Too Much Attributed to Unionism. American unionists exaggerate 
when they say, in their testimony and in their periodicals, that without 
unions wages in their trades would be less by half than at present. Wages 
generally were high during business activity before the spread of unionism 
about the year 1880, and are high now, considering speed and quality of 
work and amount of employment, at many places, and among many workers 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 187 

The Chief Educating Force. The fact that wage workers 
are now paid more than formerly because they produce more, 
might be used as an argument against the claim of unionism, 
by saying that the improvement in their condition has been 
caused by inventors of machinery, and by enterprising em- 
ployers who utilized inventions with success. But besides the 
answer above — that only the exceptional employer willingly 
grants unorganized and immobile men higher wages because 
of enlarged product — it seems true that unionism, despite its 
faults, has been the chief force in elevating those whose need 
for it led them to embrace it, and in developing their capacity 
for enlarged production of wealth. Education of consequence 
is that which is acquired for a practical purpose of self-ad- 
vancement. Eminently practical have been the knowledge and 
business capability acquired by wage workers from their 
experience in unionism. To a large extent improvement thus 
brought about in mind and charactei^ has enabled them to 
operate so successfully the wonderful machinery of present 
times. And another important fact is that it was largely 
because of trade union demand for higher wages that inven- 
tions have come into use. It is because of the prevailing low 
wages, for labor of fair efficiency, that machinery has been 
adopted so slowly in Continental Europe. Men do not risk 
capital in delicate and changing machinery when by hiring 

not yet materially affected by unionism, nor enjoying any special advantages 
for raising wages. There is also very little basis for the claim, in H. N. 
Casson's "Organized Self-Help," that trade unionism was the cause of aboli- 
tion of imprisonment for debt, and of many other harsh laws and customs 
of a century ago. Trade unionism was simply one of many expressions of 
a feeling that every human being should be relieved from neglect and in- 
justice, and assisted to the best plane of living he was capable of supporting. 
In communities where this feeling is strongest, unionism has flourished, but 
not as a cause of the feeling except to direct it in favor of organized work- 
men. Effective effort to free slaves, and to uplift humanity in many ways, 
has been common where trade conditions do not admit of unionism, and 
among people to whom it is objectionable; w^hile many American communi- 
ties not affected by unionism, towns and small cities, are unsurpassed for 
high average of well-being and happiness — for thrift, morality, religion, 
temperance, and good citizenship. At not a few places, where employers 
do not desire to exploit those among whom they live, and where if they did 
their workers would self-reliantly leave, the well-being and happiness are 
largely due to the absence of unionism's coercion and class antagonism. 



1 88 Getting a Living. 

cheap help they can retain theii^ profits without it'^ Babbage 
and Ure, who wrote in England seventy years ago, mention a 
number of cases in which inventions were brought into use by 
strikes. Hence, unionism was a force behind the employer's 
enterprise. 

Unionism Has Taught Workers How to Bargain— to get 
for their labor the greatest amount it will bring. This is 
perhaps the most useful to them of all earthly knowledge. 
Before the time of unionism they generally had to accept what 
was allowed by custom, in which there tended to prevail the 
idea that they were created to be poor, and were entitled to 
only what was necessary to keep them in condition to work. 
The same idea lingers yet in some quarters, and would doubt- 
less spread in the wealth and luxury of to-day if there were 
no wall of unionism against it. Human nature remains the 
same as it was. Unionism has also taught workmen business 
— how to use their money to largest advantage. This supple- 
ments the ability to sell labor. Collecting and disbursing in 
the aggregate millions of dollars in union funds has made 
fairly good business men of many thousands of union officials, 

^Employment of little children in 1902 in New Jersey bottle factories, 
owing to neglect by factory inspectors, was found to be preventing adoption 
of an automatic device that does the children's work as cheaply and as well. 
(The Outlook, May 3, 1902.) J. A. Hobson, "Evolution of Capitalism," 
1894, gives perhaps the best account of the growth and effects of machinery 
in production. 

Unionism and American Progress. Mr. Casson recounts America's 
industrial progress, telling of the original colonial manufacturing, of our 
world-surpassing inventions, machinery, low cost of production, high wages, 
etc. ; and, without explaining how, seems to assume that unionism, or high 
pay, was the cause of all this. Labor writers are given to such fallacies. 
High pay and good living, promoting intelligence and ambition, have added 
to American efficiency, but large pay or income came first in large product 
from already existing strength of character and rich resources. The work- 
er's necessary part of demanding the highest pay in reach has been done 
lately in unionism, but by far the most of such demanding has been done 
individually by men prepared to move. American progress has come main- 
ly, ever since the beginning, from inventors and employers (page 60), men 
who self-reliantly started enterprises, and who had the opposite of union- 
ism's class spirit. In England, where unionism is oldest and strongest, in- 
dustry is falling behind, largely because employers now lack enterprise, but 
partly because unionism fetters them too closely. 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 189 

and in Great Britain has promoted the marvelous success of the 
working classes with friendly societies and cooperative stores.^ 
Union activity has also made men speakers and organizers, and 
has been a strong force to draw the working classes onward 
in the effort to gain knowledge. Without it the ignorance of 
the British common people a century ago, when a large propor- 
tion of them could not read, would not have given way so soon 
to their present enormous use of newspapers and books. 

Unionism Has Developed a Spirit of Fraternity— a never 
failing willingness to give up immediate personal advantage 
for the sake of the common good. Union workmen, with the 
full concurrence of their wives, habitually suffer loss, and 
sometimes want, rather than accept employment on terms con- 
trary to union policy. They freely contribute from small 
incomes to aid the struggles of unionists in distant places. 
The most notable case of this was the sending of $150,000 
from Australia in 1889 for the dock strikes in London; a late 
case was the sending of $5,000 by the British Miners' Federa- 
tion for the American anthracite coal strike of 1902. The 
unionist's hearty adherence to principle reveals good traits even 
where the principle itself is not sound. 

Unionism Has Fitted the Workers for Citizenship. This is 

^Figures of union finances are given on page 168, and of British coopera- 
tion on page 74. In 1899 the British friendly or mutual benefit societies 
numbered 29,985, with 11,424,810 members, and funds aggregating $184,- 
280,031. 

Union Libraries and Temperance Sentiment. The Baltimore union of 
bricklayers has invested over $1,000 in a library, and to maintain it taxes 
members $1 a year. A union of laborers in Boston assessed m^embers $2 a 
year for a library. (Casson, 201.) In 1843-50 many British unions, and 
some in America, started libraries, journals, and evening classes. In 1850 
the flint glass workers' magazine, still published, said: "Get intelligence 
instead of alcohol, if you do not wish to stand as you are and suffer more 
oppression." (Webb.) Mr. Brooks, in "The Social Unrest," tells of the 
well selected libraries of Belgian unionists and socialists, and of the temper- 
ance sentiment among them and among British labor leaders. The Knights 
of Labor did not admit persons living from the liquor traffic. But on the 
whole unionism is still in favor of saloons, the rank and file not having the 
foresight and self-control of the best leaders. One of the good signs of the 
times is the stress now laid by unionists on learning economics. Their 
literature still contains much unsoundness, but they are learning as fast as 
could be expected, and are still teaching some things to the educated classes. 



y 



190 Getting a Living. 

true especially of Great Britain. ' To society such fitness comes 
next in importance to the ability of making one's labor fetch 
a living. By their continual agitation against old laws and for 
new ones, British workmen were trained to use intelligently the 
right to vote, as it was from time to time (and largely by their 
own influence) extended to more of them. From political 
efforts of unionism, a similar training is now being experienced 
in all the enlightened countries. Political activity, to be useful, 
in outward results or in effects on mind and character, must be 
directed to a definite purpose, and for this direction there must 
usually be involved some clear personal benefit. But in a 
respect still more important, unionism has brought enlight- 
enment and elevation of character by securing for the workers 
leisure time. To shorten the work day has been from the 
first an effort of unionism second only to its effort to raise 
wages. Whether secured by agreements with employers or 
by factory laws, the shortening of the work day has come 
almost wholly by reason of unionism. Directly it has been but 
slightly advanced by other forces that raise wages, such as 
growth of labor demand, and the bargaining capacity of indi- 
viduals ready to move to secure better pay. This shortening 
has proceeded furthest in Australasia and in Great Britain, 
where unionism is strongest; in America it has come in the 
best unionized trades, affecting other trades through their 
influence ; and in Continental Europe it has only recently 
begun to make much progress, since unionism there acquired 
some power. It is needless to say that intelligence and capable 
citizenship are impossible, to all but a few exceptional minds, 
where the work day, as in Continental Europe, is eleven or 
twelve hours long, and the living confined to a stinted supply 
of coarse necessaries. Time and strength and spirit to think 
are the first requisites that lift men above the plane of drudge 
animals — to fit them for producing large wealth with complex 
machinery, for giving industry a market by means of varied 
consumption, and for participating in self-government. In 
different ways unionism has taught self-help, the main force 
in making men — especially associated self-help, the main force 
in public movements. For many years this lesson was learned 
in England from struggles worthy to be called heroic. Espe- 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 191 

cially valuable is unionism now for its most effective of all 
efforts toward Americanizing the hordes of foreigners who 
pack themselves into our cities. 

Would Not Democracy be a Sham Without Unionism? 
If without unions, in manufacturing countries having no 
vacant land, and not growing fast industrially, men would 
have to take the wages offered, would they really be free men, 
or virtual serfs? Would they not tend to become inefficient as 
workers, and servile in manner toward the upper classes on 
whose favor they depended? There can be no worthy inde- 
pendence of character unless a man habitually exercises choice, 
and has a large share in fixing his own conditions of life. By 
the mass of working people this independence can be possessed 
only through unionism. If unorganized they at present could 
not have it, though employers willingly paid them more than 
they now receive. They might then be bribed or fattened into 
complete submission, A non-resisting class have always been 
a subject class. In its effect on their character the discipline 
of maintaining good conditions through unionism may be 
worth as much to them and to society as their good living itself. 
And is it less beneficial to the character of employers, and to 
society, that unionism deprives employers of feudal mastery 
over the masses?^ 

That Unions Have a Right to Exist is Fully Proved, there- 
fore, by the preceding discussion — that they are a necessary 
factor in modern society if government of, by, and for the 
people is not to perish from communities having large scale 
industries. Among the best friends of unionism during the 

^"An Aggrieved Class Owes a Duty to the Aggressor not less than to 
itself. It is not just to either to submit without protest or remonstrance. 
Such a submission tends to degrade the moral nature of both," Kelly Mil- 
ler, The Arena, Dec. 1902. In the same issue of this magazine H. N. Casson 
quotes from Wendell Phillips — "The labor movement is my only hope for 
democracy;" and from Gladstone — "Trade unions are the bulwarks of mod- 
ern democracies." Prof. F. G. Peabody says: "The economic order is an 
instrument for the making of men; and a struggle which, like the present 
labor movement, brings forth, even through much travail, more thoughtful 
and loyal men, is the birth struggle of a better social world." See his book, 
"Jesus Christ and the Social Question," p. 282. On p. 186 he well says: 
"The modern social question is one fruit of the education of the masses. It 
is not a sign of social decadence, but a sign of social progress." 



192 Getting a Living. 

last thirty years have been the scientific economists. They have 
perceived that it is a natural and inevitable outcome of modern 
industrial conditions. Workers in great industries are no more 
to be blamed for uniting into unions than are migratory birds 
for going south in autumn. In each case there is only an appli- 
cation of foresight to the purpose for which God gave it — 
namely, to guard against approaching danger.^ 

Yet Judgment Must be Considerate Toward Unionism's 
Opponents. People's beliefs and prejudices are always a 
product of their training. He must be a man of masterly 
wisdom and self-control whom we could hold responsible for 
the character of all his honest opinions. Some evil institutions 
were once good, the best perhaps of which society was then 
capable. No doubt in primitive times many a person welcomed 
slavery as a refuge from massacre or starvation. During the 
Dark Ages the common people found safety by huddling 
around the castle of their feudal lord. His military protection 
was a return for their service to him. Where the ruling classes 
a century ago were thoughtful, as they usually were, of the 
poor around them, the latter probably fared better than they 
could have fared under any other arrangement so long as they 
remained in ignorance. Doubtless the same is true to-day in 
different countries of the servant class, and of many peasants 
or farm workers protected by custom or neighborhood kindli- 
ness — men not prepared to do so well if thrown on their own 
resources. 

To be Obedient, and to Know Their Place, were therefore 
deemed by the ruling classes the proper attitude of the com- 
mon people. The latter were dependent, and were looked out 
for, somewhat as children. The error with many who opposed 
unionism was that they held on to this view long after consid- 
erateness for laborers had ceased. The early factory owner 
hired them as cheaply as he could, leaving their fate to the poor 
authqrities. By reason of the long subjection of the poor, and 
of their ignorance and degradation, it took several genera- 
tions for the upper classes to realize that a laborer was a man 

^The necessity for trade unionism is further discussed in the chapter on 
arbitration and in the chapter on combination and liberty, together with the 
question of how far unionism is desirable. 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 193 

and a brother, and that his education, and recognition as a 
voting citizen, were necessary for the highest welfare of socie- 
ty.^ The same element of caste is still in human nature, among 
rich and poor alike, and shows itself continually in many ways. 
In later times, besides a remnant of the old feeling that the 
employer alone should rule, many have opposed unionism 
because of a conscientious belief in the largest freedom of con- 
tract. Some phases of this freedom will be discussed in the 
next chapter, and other phases in the chapters on 'the shorter 
work day, on labor laws, and on arbitration. At present many 
good people oppose unionism because of abuses in its practices, 
and because they believe many of its principles to be unsound. 
To an examination of principles and practices we will now pro- 
ceed. 

^Not Conscious Oppression, can we believe, at least with many who 
consented to it, was the "unreasonable determination of the governing 
classes [1830-40] to keep the workingmen in a state not merely of sub- 
jection, but of abject submission Class prejudice was so strong that 

any attempt at parley made by the workers, however respectfully, was 

regarded as presumptuous and unbecoming The continued exclusion 

of the workmen from the franchise made constitutional action on their side 

impossible Regarding absolute control over the conduct of work 

people as a sine qua non of industrial organization, even the genuine phil- 
anthropists insisted on despotic authority in the factory. Against the abuse 

of this authority there was practically no guarantee Large sections of 

the wage earners were not only moderate in their demands, but submissive 
in their behavior. As a rule, wherever we find exceptional aggression and 
violence on the part of the operatives we discover exceptional tyranny on 
the side of the employers." (Webb's History, 149.) 

Lord Londonderry's Manifesto in 1844, against his striking miners, did 
not sound so arrogant then as it would sound to-day. He warned the 
shopkeepers "of his town of Seaham," on pain of his boycott of them, not 
to "assist the infatuated pitmen [by selling them groceries on credit] in 
prolonging their own miseries by continuing an insane strike, and an unjust 
and senseless warfare against their proprietors and masters.'^ "The same 
intolerance marked the journals of the dominant classes. It seems to have 
been habitually taken for granted that the workman had not merely to 
fulfill his contract of service, but to yield implicit obedience in the details 
of his working life to the will of his master. Combinations by the 'lower 
orders' were regarded as futile attempts to escape from their natural posi- 
tion of social subservience. In short, the majority of employers, even of 
this time of negro emancipation, seem to have been unconsciously acting 

upon the dictum that 'the true solution of the contest of all time 

between labor and capital is that capital should own the laborer, whether 
13 



194 I Getting a Livin 



<S ^ ^-w.,.^. 



white or black.'" (Webb, 150. The first and second quotations are the 
words of the manifesto, changed only by the italicizing; the remainder of 
the paragraph is quoted from Mr. Webb.) 

To Look Back and Criticise is Easy, but it is doubtful if, in con- 
scientiousness, or in effort to do one's duty toward other classes and the 
public, the proportion of performance, to means of knowing the right, rises 
higher now than it was at periods in the past. We must receive the good, 
however it comes, and be thankful to get it in any way. With long and 
weary struggle humanity has had to work out its own salvation. The liber- 
ties granted in Magna Charta were wrested from King John in 121 5 by 
warring barons. Their turbulence having become ruinous to rising indus- 
try and trade, their power was taken from them in 1485 through a bargain 
in which the trading class gave up some of their liberties to King Henry 
VII. in exchange for his protection. Charles I. and James II., in 1649 and 
1688, were overcome by Cromwell the country gentleman and a solid middle 
class of farmers and traders. The wave of liberty that struck America in 
1776 was started by Rousseau and other theorists, who worked over and 
added to ideas that came to them from the world's previous thinking. In 
all these cases the work for liberty was done by the only ones who had the 
power and intelligence to do it. It is not discreditable to Jefferson, Adams, 
and the others, that despite all the declamation over liberty they were mostly 
aristocrats or slaveholders, and knew nothing of the equality that rose in 
Jackson's time and later from the mixing of people in the West. Some of 
them foresaw the equality that was coming, and most of them performed 
nobly their part in bringing it about. Liberty reached the common people 
about as soon as they were able to use it with benefit instead of injury. 

The Common People Deserve Credit for Demanding Liberties 
that have come — abolition of imprisonment or sale for debt, of binding out 
to service, of slavery, of foul prisons, of the punishment of many crimes by 
hanging (all this and more were common up into the nineteenth century) ; 
for demanding the right to vote and to combine in unions, and for demand- 
ing successively the long list of laws enacted for education, for regulation 
of factory and mine work, etc. If the workers had not struggled for these 
reforms they would not have been granted — could not have been used if they 
had been — and society would have remained in mediaeval stagnation. But 
after all, is there any great merit in demanding changes that result in one's 
own direct benefit? Was not at least as much credit (especially in England, 
where men could not free and raise themselves by going on vacant land) 
due to that majority of the middle and upper classes, who, despite aristoc- 
racy, and desire to continue ruling employees autocratically, were honest 
enough to perceive the justice and necessity of granting, and with apparent 
loss to themselves, those liberties the people were prepared to use, and later 
of granting every aid that will result in benefit to them and to society. 

As Combination Easily Passes Into Conspiracy, destructive to liberty, 
the opposition to all restraint of trade, whether reasonable or not, and the 
delay in perceiving that unionism is beneficial and necessary, were probably 
not greater than was excusable. In the recommendation by the House of 



The Necessity for Trade Unionism. 195 

Lords committee in 1890 of "well considered combination amongst the work- 
ers," there was probably no greater sincerity than there was in the relentless 
opposition a half century earlier portrayed by Mr. Webb. In England most 
of the demands from workers for new liberties and laws were centered In 
trade unions, though It was middle class Intelligence and Christianity that 
granted them; but In the American demand for reforms, during 1825-50, 
and during 1872-98, trade unionists were but a small element among farm- 
ers and others to whom unionism was unknown. Before i860 the progress 
of liberty and of reform was not confined to the country's few and small 
cities, where alone unionism existed, nor has the stream of real and pure 
reform risen since unionism gained its great power after 1885. Unionism 
is good where needed, though It may easily be overdone, but fortunately 
the individual enterprise, the love of justice and liberty, that made America 
great, are still the controlling force, and are this apart from unionism's 
influence. 



CHAPTER IX. 

STRIKES, LOCKOUTS, AND BOYCOTTS. 

The Feeling Against Scabs. To establish collective bar- 
gaining — that is, to force the employer to bargain with the 
union, or with his force as a whole, instead of taking advantage 
of men's necessities by hiring them one at a time — the first 
thing to be done by wage workers, after forming a union, 
was to spread a feeling against the act of taking the place of 
one who had stopped work in order to enforce a demand. How 
well this principle was settled is shown by the present hatred 
of unionized working people for a scab, or a rat, or a blackleg, 
or a black sheep — names applied to one who takes a striker's 
place, or remains at work while others go out on a strike. 
Without this feeling against such people, however disagreeable 
and unjust it may be when carried to extremes, there could be 
no effective union unless every worker in reach were made a 
loyal member (seldom possible) ; and men not protected by law 
would in many cases have to accept the hours, wages, and con- 
ditions a short-sighted and grasping employer might choose 
to fix. Seldom would competition among employers to hire 
men be sufficient to give the latter half the advantages they 
now secure by union in bargaining. Unless this competition is 
so strong as to lead employers to hire men away from one 
another, it is of little benefit to unorganized and immobile 
people like the sweat-shop worker, who, bargaining alone, in 
the usual over-supply of his kind of labor, must take the low 
wages offered or be crowded out by another. It is the weakness 
or willingness of this other person that puts the workers com- 
pletely in the employer's power. Some employer will be bad 
enough to use this power, and better employers must do so too 
or be at a disadvantage in competition. 

(196) 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 197 

Going Out on Strike. After this rule of honor against 
ratting became settled, the unions were able to make effective 
demands on employers, but only by standing ready to resort to 
another disagreeable practice — going out on strike. Without 
this the union would amount to little or nothing in enforcing 
a demand. It would be an inoffensive debating society, good 
enough to educate its members, and to reason with the em- 
ployer if he would listen, but useless to remedy a present condi- 
tion of low wages and many hours. The chief force that moves 
the employer, even when mild requests are made, is an em- 
ployee's opportunity to find work elsewhere, or the power of 
the union to call out his men, and thus to stop his factory and 
his profits. Doubtless those employers are rare spirits who 
in granting a demand are moved less by this power than by 
their sense of justice. Discountenancing rats, and readiness to 
strike, though both practices may easily be abused, were and 
are therefore unavoidable if workmen in large scale industry 
are really to have a share in the wage bargain. 

Do Strikes Rest on a Basis of Right? Many observers 
have objected to them because they are a kind of war. Does 
this make them wrong? The refusal of one man acting alone 
to sell his labor for the wages offered is the same as refusal to 
sell flour or coal for less than the price asked. The individual 
workman or the flour dealer can ask any price, and change it 
when he pleases if not under contract. Nobody questions this 
right of one workman alone. But a factory employer, the party 
on one side, carries on his business with the labor, not of 
separate men, but of a force. He is a combination in himself, 
by reason of his absolute control of the machinery and mate- 
rials.^ All the workmen together, or at least all in one depart- 
ment, compose the other party. As one of them standing alone 
can be ignored by the employer, and as all acting together are 
scarcely as independent as he, they have no scruples against 
combining. Then, by refusing to exchange for the wages 

^"A single master," said Lord Jeffrey in 1825, "was at liberty at any 
time to turn off the whole of his workmen at once — 100 or 1,000 in number 
— if they would not accept the wages he chose to offer. But it was made 
an offense for the whole of the workmen to leave that master at once if 
he refused to give the wages they chose to require." (Webb's History, 64.) 



198 Getting a Living. 

offered the quantity of labor demanded, they are exercising the 
same right as the employer when he refuses to exchange for 
the labor offered the amount of money demanded. So far the 
right on both sides is that of any exchange. Hence, to com- 
bine for collective bargaining is now the legal right of work- 
ingmen in all free countries, and by thinkers on the subject is 
now almost universally conceded to be a moral right and often 
a duty.^ 

Is it Just to Keep Non-Union Men from Working ? The 
element of war appears when other workmen are induced to 
stay away, and the employer's industry is thereby crippled. 
This is justified by its necessity for making the combination 
effectual — a combination made by nature essential to enable 
men to do their duty toward themselves and families, and 
toward society. There is no higher duty than at all hazards 
(within the limits of freedom set by society's welfare) to be a 
free and independent man, able to contract or not as one's 
judgment directs. What war there is, when carried on reason- 
ably, is mainly self-protection from exploitation ; that is, when 
no workman is influenced by fear of violence, but only by 
appeals to his sense of justice and of social welfare, and by 
fear of the disfavor to be rightly incurred by disregard of 
them ; and when the employer is moved only by fear of inability 
to hire men, not by fear of violence to his property, or of crimi- 
iial conspiracy in a boycott to turn against him third parties not 
concerned in the dispute. With other men ready to be hired, 
there would be little use for the workmen of the one employer 
to imite unless their union, or its influence, included these other 

'That the Quitting is Not Bona Fide, but is merely a temporary with- 
holding of labor in order to force the employer, is an objection that does 
not make the case different from the holding back for a price in any sale 
which one hopes to carry through. Also, the asserted claim of strikers on 
the positions left has some moral basis in the custom and the economic need 
of kindly consideration from a powerful employer toward men necessarily 
dependent on him to a large extent, and not deprived of that claim when 
compelled by good reason to resort to a strike. Recognition by employers of 
this claim appears in the fact that few of them feel permitted by conscience 
to discharge an employee without deliberation and good reason, or feel per- 
mitted by expediency, under the necessity of possessing men's confidence in 
order to obtain best work, and of having some regard to the w^elfare and 
consequent character of one's supp.ly of labor. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 199 

men too. Besides the necessity of effective unionism for 
society's welfare, influencing outside men is also justified by 
their partaking of the union's benefits, for their own advantage 
at other times and in other shops — especially its benefit of rais- 
ing wages for all local men in the trade, whether union or 
non-union. Until selfish disregard of a struggle largely un- 
selfish brings hatred upon non-union men, there is in keeping 
them away no desire to harm them. They are urged to unite 
with the union, or at least not to work against it, and in what- 
ever benefits it secures for the craft they are free to share. 
Hence, except in the few cases where the spirit of monopoly 
leads a union to shut out persons desiring to become members, 
or to unite with a trust of employers to restrict production and 
employment, there is in unionism no conspiracy to injure any 
body of workmen. 

But is There Not a Conspiracy to Coerce the Employer 
Unfairly? By reason of the employer's long exercise of a 
large measure of absolutism over the wage contract, descended 
to him from the days of slavery and serfdom, there is in a strike 
an appearance of conspiracy to coerce him unfairly. But this 
view is superficial. The aim of the strikers is not to harm him, 
but to fulfill their first duty of protecting themselves — to get 
only what they consider their just dues. The satisfaction that 
anger may cause them to take in his losses is likely to be no 
greater than it leads him to take in theirs. Some of the same 
resentful satisfaction arises from a refusal to contract in any 
desired exchange. Besides, with excess of loss to one side the 
other side prevails. As it is from the employer's business that 
the strikers hope to continue to get their living, their desire is 
to avoid injuring it any further than is necessary to induce 
him to agree to what they believe will be best for all concerned. 
They know that most concerns will quickly fail and stop opera- 
tions if the employer is robbed, and that wages placed too high 
may force and enable him to non-unionize his shop. They 
usually believe that by getting their better work the employer 
himself is really benefited in being prevented from hiring non- 
unionists. Many an employer believes the same. Who con- 
siders it a lasting benefit to a person, saying nothing of society, 
to be permitted to gain by taking advantage of the necessities 



200 Getting a Living, 

of others too weak to avoid the exploitation? What is the 
difference in principle between an employer's cutting down 
to bare subsistence the pay of people who must submit or 
starve, and a Shylock pawnbroker's charging of fifty per cent 
interest for a loan on the last furniture of a family in distress 
of sickness? The strike, and the efforts to prevent ratting, are 
necessary, within limits of moderation, to enable a force of 
workmen to act as one party in the bargain and exchange. 
When bargaining with them one at a time, in the present 
struggle for existence in industrial centres, the employer's pow- 
er over them is dangerous to society. Within moderation, what 
coercion there is in the union's pressure on the employer, and 
on workmen to join it or stay away, is a trifle as an evil 
in society compared with the wrong there would be in the 
employer's unfair advantage over many workmen if they were 
wholly unorganized. This is only one of many cases in society 
where, for the sake of others, and of all together, a person can- 
not be permitted to do as he pleases. In some cases he is pre- 
vented by law, but in others law is not applicable, and the only 
preventive force is public disapproval, which under the objects 
and necessities of unionism is justifiably organized and con- 
centrated. 

The Employer is Better Able to Bear the War than the 
workmen. With all their combination, they are not yet on an 
equal footing with him. He loses his profits while idle, his fixed 
expenses, and a few customers, while the workmen risk losing 
the employment on which they live, and are often brought 
down for a time to a condition of want. When other men take 
their places their loss is serious. Their strike war is the more 
allowable because it is started by the party whose risk is 
greatest. Everybody of right motives, union workmen and all, 
would be glad to do away entirely with strikes. The constant 
effort of all unionists worth considering is to reduce strikes 
to the lowest point permissible under proper regard for right 
conditions of labor. But workmen have no other remedy. Con- 
sidered as a whole, as explained in the preceding chapter, the 
effect of strikes on workmen, on industry, and on public wel- 
fare, has been decidedly beneficial. Judging by their fruits is 
the best method of testing institutions. Strikes must therefore 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 201 

be justified as a last resort, after all reasonable measures of 
peace have failed. To work, or not to work, is an inalienable 
attribute of freedom, the same as to employ or not to employ, 
to sell or not to sell. To obtain their just dues, many sections 
of the working class must have unions. To make their unions 
effectual, they must be able to resort to strikes. Employers are 
few who without a union, or without a readiness of all suitable 
workers to refuse his offer and go elsewhere, would grant all 
in wages and conditions that employees ought to have. The 
only way to get rid of strikes is for both employers and work- 
men to learn and frankly agree upon what is just to both sides. 
Progress in this direction is being made, as will be shown in 
the chapter on conciliation and arbitration. 

Pressure to Join the Union. It is to keep all in the union, 
and to prevent interference with it by outside workers, that 
ratting is frowned upon so severely. Efforts to gain men who 
have never joined the union, nor worked against it, are usually 
confined to friendly reasoning and persuasion. But it is prob- 
able that a threatening attitude (a threat of social disfavor, 
or of refusal to work with, being allowable, not a threat of 
violence) has often been taken too soon toward those outside 
the union who have never specially offended. Men do not like 
to be forced to join a union by fear of being tabooed, nor to 
be directly forced to do anything not required by law ; and 
first impressions made by a brusque walking delegate, or shop 
chairman, on a stranger arriving from a smaller town, may 
long lead him to fear the union as his persecutor rather than 
to be drawn toward it as his friend. This is especially true 
of a man starting a small shop of his own, who in some trades, 
if he does his own work, must join the union or bear from it 
a disfavor that is damaging in strongly unionized towns. The 
fewer the capable men left outside of the union, the greater 
are its chances to obtain its demands. As it is practically 
impossible to drive a non-union man out of the business, in 
view of the desire of some employers to keep him in, to say 
nothing of the unlawfulness of attempts to ruin non-union 
shops by boycotting, it would seem as if friendliness to win him 
ought to be continued as far as discipline will allow. 

Is it Right to Refuse to Work With Non-Unionists? Yet 



202 Getting a Living. 

it is the unquestionable right of unionists, in fixing the condi- 
tions on which they will sell their labor, to force a man to join 
the union so far as that can be done by refusing to work with 
him. The law involved here will be discussed presently. 
Doubtless also, at the time of a rat's offense, expression of 
contempt for him is necessary, to deter others from following 
his example, and to make all realize that it is not only good to 
be inside the union, but bad to be outside by expulsion. For 
a person who by ratting obstructs selfishly a collective move- 
ment for the good of all, himself included, contempt must 
unavoidably be felt, whether expressed or not. However, 
continued ostracism of rats has often reached the ,stage of 
fanaticism, becoming one of the excesses by which the growth 
of unionism in public favor has been seriously retarded. It 
would seem wise to stop the ostracism where it became suffi- 
cient to prevent commission of the rat's offense, in order that 
he might then be won over to unionism, and changed from an 
enemy into a friend, as the state now endeavors to reform 
criminals. Contempt for a rat is less justifiable than contempt 
for a traitor; because the jurisdiction of a union over the men 
in a trade is not and cannot be established and acknowledged 
like a government's necessary power over its citizens, and also 
because a man refusing to join a union is not recreant to his 
class obligations in those cases where trade conditions make 
unionism superfluous or even harmful.^ 

^The Reasons for Discountenancing Eats. It is sometimes said that 
unionists may properly refuse to associate with non-unionists because the 
latter are inferior in skill and character, as physicians discountenance 
quacks. Objection to rats for this reason exists perhaps to but a slight 
extent. As explained below and elsewhere, the union's interest is necessarily 
to get as members all that do the work. To its credit it may be said that 
unionism is practically free of the tyranny of social exclusiveness or caste, 
which attempts to keep down many a worthy person in professional and 
military circles. Another reason sometim_es given for refusing to work 
with rats, namely, the danger of accident from incompetence of fellow 
employees, is probably thought of but rarely. That ratting brings failure 
to a strike, and destroys unionism, is reason enough for objecting to it. 

When Does the Scab Deserve Praise Instead of Blame? The late 
remark of President Eliot of Harvard University, that a scab, or rat, is a 
good type of the American hero, had doubtless no reference to the scab 
who is said to make a business of strike breaking, or to the scab 
who slinks in to take selfishly an advantage, not regarding the injury he 



Strikes, Lockouts, mid Boycotts. 203 

Driving a Man From a Position He Has Long Held. For 

a man at work who refuses to join when an open shop is union- 
ized, no exception could be made. It seems hard to make him 

inflicts on the strikers and on his class, nor the moral claim of the strikers 
to their positions if their conduct is reasonably excusable. The scab of 
another kind, a man who refuses to strike, may thus do right when by 
sound judgment the strike is unwise or unjust. He is upheld by the 
union's national officials when the strike is contrary to the union's rules. 
Of the same type of scab are strikers that return to work before such a 
strike is ended. Scabs of this class are censured much or little according 
as they arc few or many. Very slightly on them falls "labor's hatred of 
labor," protested against by Dr. Hillis. When a strike is to be deservedly 
a failure, they may be justified in ending it quickly. 

These Have the Noble Qualities Suggested by President Eliot when 
they are led less by the motive of saving their wages and positions than 
by the motive of duty to end a bad movement, and thus to benefit all con- 
cerned. Similarly noble is the man that declines to join a union that is 
not needed, and which, by turning men from individual merit to lean on 
superfluous collectivism, is likely to result in more harm than good. In 
many cases workers hold, to a false and evil extreme, the partly true idea 
that "extension of unionism is their only protection against a slavery be- 
coming more helpless as capital consolidates." Only the first type of scab 
is "a traitor, false to that cause which can alone bring him salvation, 
meanly gratifying immediate needs at the cost of the future of the class." 
(Vida D. Scudder.) Yet even he, despite the gain to himself, may be 
actuated by a good motive, and may be both physically and morally coura- 
geous, when he aims to break a monopolistic holding of wages in one 
trade so high above the wages in other trades of the same skill as to be 
unjust to men of the latter excluded, and to the public taxed in high prices. 
The claim that a scab has no moral right to work, because he thus destroys 
the hopes of his fellow men, is true or false according to whether or not 
the strike is just and necessary — to whether those hopes are entitled to such a 
basis. As to Dr. Lyman Abbott's lately quoted remark, to the efl^ect that 
it is a worker's duty "to join the union, the duty may rest (i) on expediency, 
in inability otherwise to get work or live in peace; (2) on a real need for 
a union in the trade; and (3) on a need for conscientious members to direct 
the union wisely. But where the union is superfluous it would be a duty 
not to join, and generally a regard for one's individual interests will out- 
weigh as a duty a regard for those of the class. Far-sighted and lawful 
pursuit of one's individual interests will eventually result in what is best for 
the class also, and for society as a whole. And in all the cases above it is 
a dut\' on intelligent workers to judge for themselves, not passively to fall in 
with a crowd led mainly by feeling. Fortunately the unbiased public does 
so judge, and discriminates in its acceptance of the unionist's opinion of 
scabs. Where the strike is unjust, or the union not needed, or its methods 
bad, those remaining outside not only gain nothing from the union's efforts. 



204 Getting a Living. 

give up his position, but what else could be done when the 
union is strong enough to do this? He could give no valid 
objection to joining and paying the dues of a necessary union 

but are harmed by its introduction of coercion and discord, which make 
conditions worse; and when, by remaining outside, they remove, or prevent 
the coming of, such a state of affairs, they are the ones that benefit the 
unionists, and do so by incurring the latter's abuse. No doubt, in the 
present attempt to plant unionism everywhere, there will be many cases in 
which the peace of the trade and the town will thus be preserved 

The State Alone Can Have the Power of Compulsion, beyond what 
compulsion there may be in refusal to work with or associate with one. The 
contention of some unionists, that a majority of the employees in an industry, 
by voluntarily associating themselves in a union, acquire authority over those 
who do not join them, is preposterous. If this claim were granted there 
could be hundreds of self-formed bodies exercising compulsion, with no 
higher power to insure that it came from a majority, or that the majority 
was composed of men really in the trade. Compulsion by any other body 
than the state is anarchy, and if permitted would soon result in oppression 
by the strong (who would not be poor wage workers), while the risk of 
robbery, stopping production, would bring starvation and lead back toward 
barbarism. What compulsion there is must be enforced by the state's own 
officials, as in the decrees of courts. In Great Britain the state compels 
every miner in a coal pit, whether he be a unionist or not, to pay, by deduc- 
tion from his wages, his share toward the salary of a check weighman 
chosen by the union. 

American Unionists, too, Can Have Compulsion Enforced by the State 
(can have it take away from each man the right to decide whether or not 
to join the union as Austria does as to joining the guild) if they can convince 
legislatures that this is just and desirable; and they can remove constitu- 
tional bars if they can convince enough of the people to secure an amend- 
ment. What cannot be obtained in this way, experience has proved, is not 
good for society, nor eventually for any class or individual. In the con- 
stitution, drawn from the wisdom of all the centuries, change was made 
difficult in order that it might be a reliable safeguard for the rights and 
liberties of minorities, against just such majorities as these in unions, who 
can enforce their will by mob power, and are not specially in need of con- 
stitutional protection. The most noted case of "abiding by the decision of 
the majority," setting aside the constitution, was the crucifixion of Christ; 
and there the ^'standard of living" of the priests was doubtless in the mind 
of Caiaphas when he said it was expedient that one die and the nation (hier- 
archy) perish not. 

The State and the People Have No Choice in prohibiting unlawful 
compulsion by the union. Nature, which, to secure to men the justice essen- 
tial for getting a living, made the state a necessity and has maintained it 
in some form ever since the earliest savagery, will at once begin to destroy 
civilization if the state permits unions to rule outside minorities. The state 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 205 

that aimed to benefit him as much as any others, while to let 
him stay would weaken the union's position in the shop, since 
if one could refuse to join others could refuse too, and place 
the shop outside the union pale. So far as the union improved 
wages and conditions, he would get the benefits without help- 
ing to bear their cost. To permit him to work as before, not 
sharing the benefits, would leave the way open for others to 
cut under the rate of the union, and so oust it from the shop.^ 
As a man's usual right to do as he pleases, without a reason 
for it, does not include cases where the rights of others are 
affected, he could hardly be allowed to stop a union in a justi- 
fiable movement whose completion might increase its mem- 
bers' wages for a lifetime, and benefit all in the trade, with 
society as a whole, and whose failure would take away their 
present employment altogether in case the shop was ratted with 
outside men. Hence Mr. Baer was in error when he likened 
freedom to work as a rat with freedom to worship. Though, 
since no man liveth unto himself, a person's worshiping is a 
matter of some interest to others, by reason of its connection 
with public morality and safety, yet the interest is so remote, 

that sinneth long in that way shall surely die. The union's members may 
impose on themselves any rules they choose that are not contrary to the state's 
laws for all, but as to outsiders, however selfish, they can do nothing but 
deserve their support and peaceably persuade them of such desert, back of 
which persuasion there can be nothing stronger than a threat of refusal to 
work with or associate with. As men too stubborn or selfish to join a 
needed union will seldom suit the employer, any greater power of compul- 
sion than unionists have now would be obvious tyranny. The gaining by 
those few non-unionists who continue to enjoy the union's high wages with- 
out paying its dues, and while working against it instead of for it, will not 
be greater in the aggregate than the gaining by unionists, and would-be 
unionists, from the effect of non-union action to keep unionism out of trades 
and places where it would result in general harm. People do not need to 
join the state, unless they are immigrants, but are born into it, as into the 
earliest family tribe; and in settling its laws the minority have a part, while 
its government is the agent of all, and has not, since barbarous times, sought 
like some unions to conquer outsiders by fair means or foul. Abraham Lin- 
coln, who said "Thank God, the laborer has a right to strike," said also that 
"No man is good enough to govern another without that other's consent." 
(See Coal Strike Commission's report, Labor Bulletin No. 46, p. 491.) 

^The restriction in 1903, to unionists alone, of an advance in pay in the 
Pennsylvania soft coal field, many non-union men also being employed, 
must rest on the union's secure position with the employers' association. 



2o6 Getting a Living. 

and the question of right worship so difficuU to decide, that far 
more harm than good would come from union or state regula- 
tion of religion ; but usually a person's working as a rat injures 
directly all in his trade in the town (himself included event- 
ually) in the concrete matters of lower wages, longer days, and 
worse conditions of labor, while the regulation necessary in 
unionism is easily practicable, and may be so conducted as 
eventually to benefit all and harm none. To render a union 
strong in the city, and capable of obtaining in wages all that 
marginal profits will allow, it must unionize all the shops it can. 
With many shops open to non-union men, it might not be able 
to control for striking enough of the labor supply to exert much 
influence on wages ; and those employers who justly granted 
its demands might be weakened unfairly by competitors hiring 
rats at wages too low. 

The Personal Freedom a Man Gives Up by joining a 
union, a relinquishment often dwelt upon by unionism's oppo- 
nents as degrading, is like the freedom he loses by living under 
a government, instead of in the woods as a savage. When 
going alone, if he works where unionism is needed, he does 
not have the freedom to raise his wages (under his present 
efficiency), which is the important kind of freedom to him. 
He gives up freedom to do what he does not want to do, such 
as going alone and making his own contracts with the em- 
ployer, but multiplies his power to attain ends desired. Besides, 
after joining he is one of the union, and helps to rule it. He 
may give up less power over himself than he gains over others. 
The case is the same as that of joining any corporation or 
society, in which one binds himself to risk or do certain things, 
or to refrain from doing, for the sake of certain advantages 
thus to be obtained. In such a case compulsory membership 
in the union, if one remains in the town or in the business 
(enforced by refusal to work with non-unionists), is analo- 
gous to compulsory submission to the government. The gov- 
ernment, as being essential to the well-being of society every- 
where, is kept in force by the majority of citizens in the 
country, through their votes or influence. The union, as being 
similarly essential in large scale industry, is kept in force by 
the majority of workers in the trade, through exercise of their 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 207 

right to refuse to work with persons whose presence Is inju- 
rious to trade interests. In neither case can society afford to 
permit individuals to gratify their whims, which would usually 
result In loss to themselves as well as to the public.^ 

The Large Power of Trade Union Officials. As the people 
composing a government find it advantageous to give much 
power to officials, especially in time of war, so the members of 
a union, voting with perfect democratic equality, in meeting or 
convention, and by referendum, place such powers and checks 
upon their officials as experience proves to be most wise. In 
city building trades, the large power given by a union to its 
walking delegate or business agent, to call out on strike its 
members at work on a building, secures prompt and effectual 
enforcement of Its rules ; but, as In government, such power Is 
sometimes used by the delegate to extort bribes for himself from 
contractors, and, with unjust strikes, to tyrannize over his trade 
and the public. Unions, like corporations and governments, 
find It best to give large powers to executive officers if able and 
pure men can be found, and can be given so free a hand as to 
be held responsible for the working of their departments. Gen- 
erally the power to declare a strike Is well guarded by being 
subject to the approval of executive boards and of national offi- 
cers, as well as to a two-thirds vote by secret ballot In the local 
union concerned. In the Mine Workers' constitution some fea- 
tures specifically disapproved by the late Strike Commission 
were the voting by boys for delegates, and the convention's 
power to decide by a bare majority vote, and that not required 
to be taken by secret ballot.^ In the history of unionism there 
have been cases In which a strike resolution was forced through 
a local union or a convention, by not having a secret ballot, and 
by intimidating those members opposed to the strike. Such a 
union Is like an unstable government, and must learn to adhere 
to a wise and just constitution or suffer the penalty of going to 
pieces, which has been the well deserved fate of many a govern- 
ment and of many a union. 

^Lahor Bulletin No. 46. 

^The Claim That Unionism is Purely Voluntary, stated by George 

Howell in his "Conflicts of Capital and Labor," and by witnesses before 

Parliamentary commissions, is shown by Webb to be equivocal. In a shop 

fully unionized each man's choice of unionism is voluntary in the sense that 



2o8 Getting a Living. 

Abuses of Picketing. The methods of keeping vacant the 
places left by strikers have often included law breaking in 
violence to men coming to take them, which has unquestion- 

he chooses it instead of giving up his job or not securing one. In large 
districts of England a man could not live as a coal miner outside of the 
union. No one would work with him, or associate with him. The same 
is true of different trades in well unionized towns, both in England and in 
America. As explained above, the union must include all as far as pos- 
sible, or fail in its main object of collective bargaining. The exceptions to 
this rule, mentioned by Ralph M. Easley in his article in McClure's Maga- 
zine, Oct. 1902, must be confined to such cases as those of the railway 
brotherhoods, which have special reasons for not enforcing It. (i) Gener- 
ally, by reason of their merit, they are willingly recognized by the employ- 
ing company, which does not try to displace their members with outsiders, 
and hence they have no need to enforce such a rule. (2) The favor of a 
powerful corporation they can win better by conciliation than by striking; 
and (3) the public would not permit many strikes that stopped train service. 
The agreement of the building trade unions, in different cities, to work with 
non-unionists under certain conditions (they have done so to only a slight 
extent) arose in some cases, at Boston especially, from the willing recog- 
nition of unionism, by reason of which the unions do not need to guard 
their power by refusal to work with non-unionists, and may perhaps extend 
it and win them by being lenient. (U. S. Industrial Commission's Report, 
XVII. , Ixxxv.) But generally, where unionists work with non-unionists 
the reason is that the union is not yet strong enough to refuse to do so. 
This really seems to be largely the case with the railway brotherhoods. At 
best, if a union's Influence was to be preserved, the liberality of working 
with non-unionists would need to be stopped short of permitting them to 
become the majority in a shop. 

Voluntary Unionism the Ideal to be Sought. Yet perhaps the brother- 
hoods have learned that if strength were not lacking it still Is wisest to rely 
solely on merit when a high level of unionism has been reached. Chief 
Arthur of the engineers says, "If our record Is not sufficient to convince a 
man that it Is to his interest to become a member, he remains out." Chief 
Sargent of the firemen says the man taking a striker's place will not suit 
the employer; and that to the union "converts by force are of no value. 
There has been too much coercion and too little instruction and education 
along these lines." (See Easley article, cited above.) In all the joint agree- 
ments (generally successful) of those in the National Association of Builders 
with local unions, "it is the recognized policy to make no effort against non- 
union men, on the theory that If they are simply Ignored they will cease to 
be factors." Mr. Sargent's words are suggestive of the goal that unions 
should strive to reach. Such reliance on merit alone will be possible when 
the union draws most or all of the desirable men with Its benefit features, 
and with the social advantage of association with the best; and when the 
employers in the trade, like the railroads, find that friendliness with the 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 209 

ably harmed the general cause of unionism far more than it 
has aided particular strikes. Often it is a drawback in the 
particular case also. As a union cannot well include all men 

union pays. The way for a union to attain this ideal condition Is to per- 
ceive and acquire merit, and to prove possession of it by instructing all the 
workers and employers in its trade. This has been done by the Lancashire 
cotton workers, whose agreement with employers permits employment of 
non-unionists, but whose unions are so wisely managed, and the need for 
unions is so clear, that practically all workers in the trade are members. 
It is such fullness of membership in the British unions of cotton and coal 
workers that makes very small their out-of-work benefits, the main purpose 
of which is to buy up the surplus labor in order to protect the wage rate 
(Webb). 

Lawful Coercion in Unionism. By a vote of 4 to 3 the New York Court 
of Appeals decided in 1902 (170 N. Y. 315) that unionists (without incur- 
ring liability for damages to the workers harmed) have the right to force 
non-unionists from positions by refusal to work with them, and having this 
right may threaten a strike to secure their discharge, if the object is not to 
vent spite on them, but is to benefit themselves by strengthening their union, 
by getting for members the positions of the non-unionists, and by avoiding 
association with workers whose lower skill might cause accidents. In an 
Indiana case in 1895 damages awarded against unionists, to the non- 
unionist they forced out of his position by refusing to work with him, were 
set aside on the ground that the strikers, not being under time contract, 
could quit at any time individually or concertedly; that not even a contract 
can be enforced in involuntary labor; and that no threats or malice were 
involved. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 4, page 440.) Even the malice against 
non-unionists cruelly beaten arises from the effect of their action to thwart 
the efforts of strikers to benefit themselves. (See the paragraphs on sym- 
pathetic strikes, further on in this chapter.) 

In Great Britain, in the noted case of Allen w. Flood, decided in 1897 
by the House of Lords, the highest court of the empire, against the solicited 
opinion of six out of eight eminent lawyers, and overturning a long line of 
decisions, it was held that where an act is lawful in itself the motive is 
immaterial ; that even maliciously to induce an employer to discharge or 
not to engage an employee, without breach of contract, gives the latter no 
cause of action. The decision reversed a lower court's award of ,£20 dam- 
ages, against a union official, to each of two wood shipbuilders, whose dis- 
charge from jobs held since boyhood was forced, through threat of strike, 
by the iron shipbuilders' union, because the two men had been taught to do 
iron work. The decision also enabled employers, without liability in dam- 
ages, or for criminal threats or conspiracy, to coerce employees by threaten- 
ing a lockout. But the word maliciously, In the Labor Bulletin report, seems 
to require modification ; for afterward a high British court, in a similar 
case, awarded an employer damages, for enticing away his men, because 
the act "was a wreaking of vengeance on him." (J7, S, Labor Bulletin 
14 



210 Getting a Living. 

of its trade in the country, and would even then need to give 
notice of a strike, the stationing of pickets is unavoidable, to 
meet and dissuade men on their way to apply for work with the 

No. 33.) And one of the three dissenting judges in the New York case 
cited first above referred to a late case in which the highest British court 
"carefully limited and explained, if not virtually overruled" the case of 
Allen 'VS. Flood, because its decision, by breaking down the time-honored 
distinction between fair and unfair competition, encouraged the growth of 
cut-throat methods with trust monopolies. {N. Y. Labor Bulletin No. 13.) 
Hence, the law in both countries has come into accord with the Lord Chan- 
cellor's convincing dissent in the case of Allen ^'s. Flood. He said there 
could be no complaint of a strike declared against the two shipbuilders be- 
cause of the inexpediency of having together two sets of men of opposing 
views; but that a strike to displace and punish the two men because at 
some time previously they had worked on an iron ship would be malicious 
and unlawful. This is exactly the position taken in the last New York 
decision mentioned first above, and is also that taken in part in a contrary 
decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1899, in which the author- 
ity of Allen 'VS. Flood was specifically denied. 

Forcing Out by Strike Men Belonging to a Rival Union, as was 
done in the New York case, might be as justifiable as if they were non- 
unionists, since a rival union might obstruct as much as the latter a union's 
lawful efforts. But a strong union's purpose, as in the British case, of forcing 
out from another branch of its trade, everywhere in the country, two men 
who knew its own branch also, and who could not change their knowledge, 
would be unreasonable and unjust, though not necessarily malicious, pro- 
tection by the union of its Interests. No doubt the award of damages to 
Flood would stand in Great Britain now, as well as in New York, and in 
all the states. As stated in connection with sympathetic strikes, the benefit 
on one side is too small and remote, and the Injury on the other too serious 
and direct. There might be some benefit to a union In forcing out of shops 
all who were even able to learn Its work. The Massachusetts Supreme 
Court affirmed in 1899 an injunction against members of a union of painters, 
which notified all the union employers in Springfield that unless those em- 
ployees belonging to a seceding union signed reinstatement blanks, each 
employer might "expect trouble in his business." Perhaps, if the men in a 
single shop had, by threat of strike, forced a discharge of the rival union- 
ists, the small conspiracy Involved would have been lawful, as in New 
York ; but in Springfield the threat of trouble Indicated more than simple 
striking, that Is, boycotting, and the conspiracy was widespread In the 
attempt to drive the men from the entire city if they refused to join. The 
court said the union's advantage In gaining back the seceders, and its rights 
In relation to their right to be free from molestation, were not such as to 
bring Its acts under the shelter of the principles of lawful trade competition, 
and hence the acts were malicious and unlawful. {U. S. Labor Bulletiri 
No. 31.) 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 211 

employer struck against.^ There would generally be no use 
in striking without active influences to keep away new men. 
Perhaps contemptuous manner and speech must be expected 

The Legal Right to Strike Is Hence About What Unionists Desire- 
has been settled thus — though in practice much coercion by striking of the 
employer and of non-unionists, both in Great Britain and in America, has 
been common since the beginning of effective unionism. As shown in Chap- 
ter VII., unionists were punished for criminal conspiracy in only a few 
early cases in America, and since the legislation of 1875 they have had 
very little trouble in this respect in Great Britain. In both countries also 
there have been few suits against unionists for damages. Though, not judg- 
ing motives closely, previous decisions in both countries were almost invar- 
iably otherwise, including a leading case in 1897 in New York, and the 
Massachusetts case of 1899 referred to above, there is little doubt that the 
above cited New York case of 1902 will prevail as the law. Such was the 
opinion of Mr. F. J. Stimson in 1896 ("Handbook to U. S. Labor Laws"), 
and such have been several intermediate court decisions in New York since 
1898. The many state statutes {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 26) that seem to 
make criminal or actionable much of the coercion of non-unionists and of 
employers, will stand unenforced, as usually heretofore, or be rendered in- 
effective by absence of malice. See, in a note in Chapter XIX., reasons why 
the New York decision of 1897 is perhaps not contrary to that of 1902. 

^What Pickets May Do in England has been determined by decisions 
under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875. They may 
only give and seek information, and peaceably persuade. A penalty of £20 fine, 
or imprisonment not exceeding three months, prohibits one person or more 
from using violence to or intimidating another person or his family, or 
injuring his property; from persistently following him; from hiding his 
tools or clothes, or hindering him in their use; from watching or besetting 
his home or place of business, or the approaches to it. By trend of deci- 
sions the intimidation must be a threat of something which, if carried out, 
would be a criminal act against person or property, not simply a civil 
wrong or moral compulsion. This law of 1875, a victory for workmen 
because permitting them to do in combination any act not unlawful when 
done by one alone, is now prized less perhaps by workmen than by employ- 
ers; for by defining what strikers (one or more) may not do, it gives 
employers a ready remedy in criminal arrest, and in injunction to cease 
molesting them. Workmen would like greater privileges in picketing, but 
their present agitation for this will doubtless fail. (U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 
33.) They have sought to have the word intimidates displaced with the 
words infliicts or threatens violence. This change of the law was recom- 
mended by a majority of the Royal Commission on Labor in 1894. The 
trend of decisions is to hold picketing to giving and getting information, 
restricting even peaceable persuasion, and limiting the number of pickets to 
about two. To these narrow bounds picketing has been virtually settled by 
the famous Taff Vale decisions of 1901-2. (Chapter XXVII.) When un- 



212 Getting a Living. 

from all but self-contained pickets when men resist their rea- 
soning and pass in to accept work. But this undoubtedly is the 
limit of allowable action by the union against these men. Any 

desired, persuasion soon becomes molestation, and the mere presence of an 
unfriendly crowd intimidates. (See chapter on injunctions.) 

In America Legal Rights in Picketing and Enticing nave been nar- 
rower, by the common law and by the statutes of most of the states, though 
several states have statutes permitting substantially the British right of com- 
bining to do in a trade dispute any act not unlawful for one person. But 
in practice strikers have long had greater latitude in this country, picketing 
being done by large crowds, with much violence and intimidation, and 
usually in such cases without punishment, despite the statutes of many 
states imposing fines and imprisonment for conspiring and coercing em- 
ployers, and employees desiring to work. {Labor Bulletin No. 26.) The 
fact that men remaining at work, or taking the places of strikers, are fre- 
quently protected by policemen or special guards, or eat and sleep inside 
the works, proves that the picketing is very different from persuasion or 
getting information. During the last few years, however, injunctions 
against intimidation have been frequent, and what may lawfully be done 
in picketing is becoming settled. A county judge at Detroit, in 1901, being 
asked to define the rights of strikers against whom he had granted the 
employer an injunction, said that they had a right to circulate their printed 
matter and to accompany the employees home, provided they did so in an 
orderly manner, and did not use threats or violence. He complimented the 
strikers on their law-abiding conduct. Strictly lawful picketing in America, 
as stated by this judge, and in many high court decisions reported in U. S. 
Labor Bulletin, is hence more liberal now than that permitted by the British 
law described above, in that the persuasion and the number of pickets are 
not closely limited if the pickets are peaceable, and are not so numerous 
as to be menacing in presence. As indicated above in connection with the 
right to strike, the employer has now no right of suit for damages or injunc- 
tion against peaceably enticing away employees not under contract, nor is 
combination, in unionism indictable as criminal conspiracy, or actionable 
or enjoinable in favor of non-unionists damaged, unless it resorts to boycot- 
ting, to extortion, or to pursuing or punishing non-unionists as in the cases of 
Flood and the Massachusetts painters. Perhaps the most complete state- 
ment of the position of American courts now in regard to picketing is that 
quoted below from Judge Chetlain of a county court at Chicago, which 
Mr. Gompers says {Federationist, March, 1902) "leaves little to be desired." 

"Workingmen may use the streets in a manner not inconsistent with public 
travel for the purpose of entreaty, inducement, and peaceable persuasion in 
good faith, and a patrol or picket may not necessarily imply force or a 
threat of bodily harm, but they may not use threats, abusive epithets [such 
as the cry "scab"] or intimidation, or congregate in such numbers or with 
such show of force as is calculated to intimidate reasonable and prudent 
men, and no harm can result in granting an injunction to restrain such un- 
lawful conduct." By a leading New York decision ridicule or shouting by 
one alone is criminal. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 213 

picketing that results in bodily injury to them, or that will 
lead even the timid and weak to fear such injury, the fair- 
minded and good-intentioned public cannot afford to coun- 
tenance. While it may be selfish or inconsiderate to accept a 
striker's place, it is an offense that cannot be punished by law, 
nor with any violence by a union or other agency without 
trampling upon the law. 

Any Measure of Liberty Now Endurable in America must 
permit many acts that are selfish and unkind. Personal con- 
duct cannot be confined within narrow limits of correctness 
by force, especially such force as that of the clubs and bricks 
of hot-headed strikers and sympathizers. The disfavor of 
one's fellow men is sufificient punishment for acts of selfish- 
ness and unkindness. Worse punishment is likely to make a 
man feel justified in committing them, by viewing his persecu- 
tors as undeserving of considerateness, and also to awaken 
feelings of justification in others, who often reason that the 
poor scab ought to be praised for incurring danger and 
accepting work in order to support his family. Public opinion 
will now almost invariably support a strike in a just demand 
for higher pay from marginal profits that can afford it, or for 
removal of onerous conditions of labor. But often before the 
strike is over, by acts of violence to non-union men, by de- 
struction of the employer's property, and by wanton disregard 
of the rights and interests of the people, the union forfeits 
public favor, and does not regain it soon again. Neither for 
friendliness to the cause of labor, nor for any other reason, 
are the people ready to tolerate the beating and killing of 
defenseless men who have disregarded no law. The power of 
trade unions in America was badly weakened by the violence 
in the great railway strikes of 1894. Perhaps they have not 
yet fully recovered their former position of influence, despite 
the doubling since then of their membership. Every case of 
violence and unreasonableness among them tends to settle the 
law toward holding them more closely within bounds.^ 

^Who Are the Rioters? It is often said that the worst acts of disorder 
connected with large strikes are not committed by strikers, but by lawless 
outsiders who take advantage of the opportunit>' the strike affords. Un- 
doubtedly there is some truth in this claim, especially in the throwing of 



214 Getting a Living. 

Boycotting is not simply a termination of a person's own 
dealings with a business concern that has given offense, but 
consists of a combination among a number of persons to do 

stones by outside hoodlums that like such excitement, and in the firing or 
breaking open of cars by outsiders desiring to steal or enjoying destruction. 
For the unavoidable effect of a just strike to make disorder easy, unionists 
are not to be blamed if their going out on such a strike is the only way in 
which the disorder involves them. But the truth in the claim as to lawless 
outsiders seems insufficient to lessen very much the strikers' guilt. Many 
facts against them seem conclusive. It has gone into history undenied that 
the important cases of massacre and murder mentioned near the close of 
this chapter were committed under direction of strike leaders, as deliberate 
steps in the strike campaign. An organizer of sailors' unions recounted 
with evident satisfaction, in The Independent of Nov. 6, 1902, his many 
exploits in advancing unionism by leading in violent attacks on men who 
stood in its way. In McClure's Magazine of January, 1903, a reliable 
investigator of the late anthracite coal strike mentions one case in which 
strikers waylaid and murdered a neighbor going to work, and scores of 
cases that included (by them) brutal beating, blowing up of houses at 
night, and cruel persecution of non-unionists' wives and children. In calm 
articles in The Outlook of Oct. 18 and Nov. 8, 1902, unbiased residents of 
the coal regions show that the common reports were true of the existence 
of a reign of terror. In its unanimous report, after taking many thousands 
of pages of testimony, the Coal Strike Commission, which included such 
friends of unionism as Bishop Spalding, Carroll D. Wright, and Chief 
Clark of the conductors' brotherhood, said that the strike's history was 
"stained with a record of riot and bloodshed, culminating in three murders, 
unprovoked save by the fact that two of the victims were asserting their 
right to work, and another, as an officer of the law, was performing his 
duty in attempting to preserve the peace." Men who chose to work and 
their families were ''terrorized and intimidated." The good order was 
mainly where there was no attempt to work the mines with non-unionists. 

That the Union Did Not Order the Violence, in the coal strike, by for- 
mal vote, can readily be believed, and also that little or no violence was 
committed by order or direction of union officials. But there was no need 
to order violence officially ; it was to be had by simply permitting it. While 
the union by vote, or its officials by order, could not regulate the individual 
or small group action of tens of thousands of strikers, and were naturally 
interested in encouraging zeal in the cause, yet if violence was not wanted 
by the union it would seem that a tenth part of its collective energy directed 
against scabs would have effectually restrained the hot-headed among the 
strikers and the lawless among the outsiders. Also, if violence was not 
wanted it seems strange that, instead of its being denied and minimized by 
unionists everywhere, it was not by union authority stopped early by its 
acknowledgment, and by hearty cooperation with the law officers for its 
suppression. In frequent cases strikers evidently desire to resort to law 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 215 

thus, and generally includes efforts by them to induce still 
others to join in the movement. When these others who refuse 
to join in the boycott are themselves boycotted by the original 

breaking so far as by scaring away non-unionists it will advance union in- 
terests, stopping short of the point at which it calls for suppression by 
troops, whose presence benefits the employer by emboldening non-unionists 
to go to work. The citizens' alliance, formed for protection during the 
anthracite coal strike of 1902, asked pointedly of the strike managers for 
specific effort to restrain violence instead of platonic speeches against It^ 
apparently intended to conciliate the outside public rather than to affect 
the action of strikers. And though Mr. Mitchell was doubtless sincere when 
in private meeting he urged the strikers not to give way to violence, warn- 
ing them that it would alienate public opinion and bring deserved defeat, 
it still seems strange that if violence was not wanted by the union as a 
whole its harmfulness to the cause could not be explained to the strikers, 
and its prevention effected, like the many rigidly followed points of union 
policy. No doubt union leaders would prefer not to use violence, but as 
conditions stand they accept its aid. Unions sometimes pay the fines. 

It Was Not Proved or Believed that the local unions and local leaders 
in the coal strike desired or tried to prevent such violence as would benefit 
the movement. Labor Bulletin Nos. 25, 41, and 45 record in court reports 
the facts that, under direction of bodies and officials of the United Mine 
Workers' organization, hundreds of armed strikers camped and marched 
and resorted to terrifying intimidation and violence, in Arkansas, Kentucky, 
and West Virginia. (Chapter XX.) The union violence came not only 
long ago, as at Homestead and Coeur d'Alene, nor far away, as that put 
down by federal troops in Arizona in 1903. The best and fairest writers 
often refer to strike violence in general as proceeding from the union, not 
deeming its efforts at prevention, nor the violence done by outsiders, as 
worthy of mention by way of exception. The union's complicity is admitted 
in the common contention of unionists that the scab has no right to con- 
sideration, and especially is it admitted in 

The Eleventh Commandment. In The Outlook of Nov. 3, 1902, is 
given the untenable union doctrine that as strikers offer to arbitrate, 
it is permissible for them to use violence to enforce their eleventh com- 
mandment, "Thou shalt not take thy neighbor's job." Here it is over- 
looked that, to avoid anarchy, or robbery by a mere class or band, only the 
whole people as the state can sanction physical force for any purpose except 
self-defense from violence ; and also that by carrying out this eleventh 
commandment unions can (and sometimes do) enforce monopoly powers, 
shamelessly exploiting workers excluded and consumers overcharged. How- 
ever fair the offer of arbitration, strikers cannot force the employer by tak- 
ing the law in their own hands. The right to remain at work or take a 
striker's place Is a ''part of personal liberty that can never be surrendered, 
and every infringement thereof merits and should receive the stern de- 
nouncement of the law." (Strike Commission.) This right to work is not 



2i6 Getting a Living. 

combination, the warfare of labor disputes reaches a bad stage. 
Those who come to take vacated places injure directly the 
strikers' chances of success, and by doing what is commonly 
regarded as a contemptible act. There is justification for per- 
sistent effort to keep them away. But with others the case is 
different. Not being interested in unionism, they are dragged 
into the dispute and injured. It is needless to say that lib- 
erty has disappeared when strikers so terrorize a town that 
people are afraid to sell goods or furnish board to non-union 
men, or in a city to be seen doing business with a car line or 
other concern the union has boycotted. The profit or advan- 
tage in every transaction a boycott frightens one into declining 

affected by disapproval of the scab's conduct. If it were, a majority re- 
maining at work would have the right to prevent the others from ceasing. 

"The evidence does not disclose that any of these acts were disapproved, 
that the guilty ones were remonstrated with, that their strike benefits had 
been stopped, or any protest had been made. On the contrary, the evidence 
shows that William Richelieu, who appears not only to have been an insti- 
gator but an actual participant in several assaults, was thereafter placed in 
charge of the pickets as captain." (Judge Munger on the strike of Union 
Pacific machinists at Omaha, 1902. Labor Bulletin No. 47.) "Hospitals are 
full of scabs. Four have died at Cheyenne, while three others have been killed 
in the shop . . . Professionals are the only ones that stay, and you can do only 
one thing with them." (Officer's report in Machinists' Journal, Jan. 1903.) 

How the Union is Responsible. It is undoubtedly true that outrages 
upon non-unionists occur only where respectable union sentiment looks upon 
the crimes with toleration. Sometimes the union tacitly approves, if it does 
not invite, assault, incendiarism and murder, its attitude being that any 
means are warranted. Only that little violence done for the sake of theft, 
or for the love of it, is imputable to the individual perpetrators alone. For 
all the rest the chief responsibility is upon the union, which, like any corpo- 
ration, is a body of itself, with powers apart from those of individual mem- 
bers. The strike is its own movement, not that of individuals, and the 
violence is committed for its sake, and is accepted by it with persistent 
effort to shield the perpetrators. So far as the union does not do, in action 
by vote, and by official order and influence, all in its power to prevent vio- 
lence, including cooperation by it with law officers, it is by permission and 
encouragement as responsible for the violence as if it had ordered it. Its 
duty to society is to exert all its power to control the idleness caused and the 
passions aroused by the strike it voluntarily brings about. So far as its 
intention is to gain from intimidation, it violates the law from the begin- 
ning; and so far as only by law breaking it can carry out its purpose, it has 
no right to exist. The danger point in the union's responsibility is that in- 
timidation and violence make many a strike more effective. Most of the 
assertions in this paragraph were made by the Coal Strike Commission. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 217 

is a forced contribution levied on him in support of the strike ; 
and old people, women, and others, who walk because fear of 
violence keeps them away from street cars, are practically 
forced against their will to join and march in the strikers' move- 
ment. As the strikers do not levy the contribution for them- 
selves, but to keep it from the employer struck against, they 
may not commit robbery, but on those thus forced to contribute 
the loss is the same, and their deprivation is for the strikers* 
benefit. Extending a boycott to others than the employer and 
his non-unionists is like the sovereign act of capturing from 
neutrals war materials in transit to an enemy. The union may 
call its regulations laws, but its jurisdiction does not extend 
over the public. Also, extorting from the boycotted person, 
when he surrenders, a sum of money to defray the expenses, is 
the same in principle as the exaction of a war indemnity by a 
victorious nation.^ In view of these facts, and of the union's 
status as a voluntary body any group of people can form, it is 
easy to agree with the Wilkes-Barre judge who said in 1902 
that "the boycott is destructive to personal liberty, and utterly 
subversive of all social order, all law, and all government." 

^Extorting Money for Boycott Expenses. In 1886, to force the pro- 
prietor of a large saloon in New York to displace with unionists the waiters 
and bartenders he had long employed, a crowd of 500 carried banners in 
front of his saloon for fifteen days, warning the public that he was a foe 
to organized labor. To save his business from ruin, he consented to employ 
none but unionists, and paid the boycotters $1,000 for their expenses. A 
number of the boycotters, being convicted of criminal conspiracy and extor- 
tion, under New York statutes, were imprisoned for terms of from one and 
a half to four years. (Stimson, Handbook, 258.) Mr. Stimson cites an- 
other case in which a boycotter said of the cost, "It will be paid by the 
Courier." The New York Supreme Court affirmed in 1893 the conviction 
for criminal extortion of a union official who demanded and received money 
for calling off a boycott. In Boston about ten years before, forcing an em- 
ployer by strike to pay a fine of $500 imposed by a union of stone cutters was 
held to be illegal and actionable (Stimson). Unions may fine their own 
members, but may not force payments from outsiders. In June, 1903, two 
walking delegates in New York were arrested for extortion, and evidence 
was found of payment by a building contractor of $2,500 to each of five 
walking delegates for calling off strikes in their respective trades. It is 
believed that New York delegates have many times used their power to ex- 
tort money for themselves or the union. The 1903 lockout by New York 
building contractors took away some of the dangerous and tempting power 
of walking delegates, as was done in Chicago in 1900. 



2i8 Getting a Living. 

How Far is Boycotting Justifiable? Abolitionists in the 
North boycotted the products of slaveholders ; preachers have 
advocated a boycott of Sunday newspapers, and temperance 
speakers a boycott of persons connected with the liquor traffic.^ 
A conscientious person may feel it his duty to withhold in his 
own case the patronage that gives evil people more power, and 
he may even feel it his duty to induce others to do likewise. In 
the cases above it was a kind of business that was boycotted. 
But to induce people not to deal with a particular person or 
firm cannot be carried far until it becomes actionable for dam- 
ages, and, if joined in by two or more, becomes criminal con- 
spiracy. The common law against boycotting, which is 
supplemented in a few states by statutes, seems thoroughly 
just, and is very old.^ This law now is that workmen associated 
together in a union may combine to cease dealing with an 
employer who refuses to comply with their union's rules, since 
they constitute the union aggrieved, and are directly to be bene- 
fited by inducing him to yield ; and it seems also, though denied 
by a Buffalo judge in 1899,^ that it will soon be held legal for 
the local union concerned to induce all other unions in the city 
or country to join in the boycott, since most of them are united 
in the American Federation, and all have a common interest in 
strengthening unionism as a whole, and in assisting one another 
in boycotts. Their members do not need to be urged and forced 
to boycott non-union goods, but desire to know which goods 
are of that class. When officially notified of an employer's un- 
fairness they voluntarily agree to apply in his case one of the 
methods of their combination made previously. Boycotting of 
this kind, to check which no attempts seem to be made by in- 
junction or suit for damages, is carried out by publication in the 
American Federationist of the long list headed ''We Don't 

C. D. Wright, "Industrial Evolution." 

^Of a boycott case in England in 1221, the record of which includes the 
sentence "They have caused proclamation to be made that none sell mer- 
chandise to the abbot," Mr. Stimson says in his Handbook: "This is a re- 
markable record, for in ten lines of the law Latin we have here set forth 
all the important principles of the [present] law of boycott, . . . neither 
party nor the court making any question of the illegality both of the con- 
spiracy and of the act complained of." 

'Indus. Com. VII. 634. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts, 219 

Patronize," and by reading of unfair lists and boycott requests 
in unions and trades councils. But attempting to bring into 
the boycotting combination any persons not interested in union- 
ism, especially when they have to be threatened with the com- 
pound boycott should they ignore the request, annoys and 
harms them as previously explained, and when successful is too 
dangerous a means of coercion and tyranny to be tolerated by 
law. ''In no case decided by the higher American courts has a 
boycott by workingmen been specifically held legal. "^ 

Labor Leaders Defend Boycotting, as a legitimate and 
necessary weapon of labor, as they minimize or condone the 
violence in strikes, and vehemently denounce the use of troops 
and of injunctions, where it would seem that such use could 
interfere with the exercise of no lawful rights. Evidently 
unionists think the direct benefits of those forms of law break- 
ing for which they are seldom punished outweigh the indirect 
effect to turn public opinion against them. "The broadest- 
minded and most conservative of the union leaders defend 
the right to use the boycott, without hesitation or qualification, 
and regard the tendency of the courts to condemn it as one 
of the marks of the injustice with which they believe the work- 
ing people to be treated by our rulers."^ In the elaborate written 
defense presented by Mr. Gompers to the Industrial Commis- 
sion, he claims that to induce a person to join in a boycott, one 
unionist or a hundred may not threaten to beat him or to burn 
his house, but may threaten to cease dealing with him, since to 

^Industrial Commission Reports, XVII., page cxix. These nineteen vol- 
umes, issued in 1900 and 1902, contain the latest and largest body of infor- 
mation concerning American trade unions and their policies, besides a vast 
fund of well arranged matter on various industrial subjects. 

2 Not All Leaders Favor Boycotting. The statement quoted above, made 
by a writer in the Industrial Commission's Report, is taken from Vol. 
XVII. It was well justified by the testimony of labor leaders before that 
Commission. But by a different view Mr. E. E. Clark, head of the railway 
conductors' brotherhood, showed in a very recent address at Boston his 
worthiness of his appointment by President Roosevelt on the Coal Strike 
Commission. While of course asserting the right to strike in support of a 
proper demand, Mr. Clark said that if organized labor cannot work out its 
salvation without unlawful acts its existence cannot be defended; that an 
employee who uses the boycott, beyond the exercise of his own free will, 
cannot complain of the employer that uses the black ist, 



220 Getting a Living. 

cease dealing they have a right. This can be admitted, as it 
may be also that unionists have the right to agree among them- 
selves on a boycott, and perhaps to issue a general appeal to 
outsiders for voluntary assistance in it. But he does not men- 
tion the vital matter, which is that one may not without incur- 
ring liability for damages, and that more may not without being 
guilty of criminal conspiracy, attempt to destroy a person's 
business by actively inducing uninterested third parties, how- 
ever peaceably, to cease patronizing him, and especially by 
forcing these into the boycotting agreement under the duress 
of fear of loss to themselves. It would seem that the law here 
must continue to be approved as just by the unbiased, whatever 
the grievance of strikers, and however much they might better 
their condition. No worker is bound to remain with any 
employer, and for helpless poverty there is lawful provision; 
while to better their condition is the object of most men who 
commit property crimes. But if boycotting were made legal 
there would be no remedy for the employer ruined, though by 
mistake the claims of the strikers were untenable, or though 
they were actuated by malice. In the future, as found necessary 
in the past, the fact of opportunity for grievous injustice and 
tyranny will continue to make criminal the combining by many 
to do what for one alone would be innocent, or only 
actionable for dam.ages. The Industrial Commission's sug- 
gestion, that combined withholding of patronage by union- 
ists, and by others because of sympathy, be permitted as lawful, 
but that it be unlawful to coerce third parties through fear of 
loss to themselves — seems unobjectionable if the sympathetic 
withholding by third parties be wholly voluntary, given in 
response to mere request, and involving no urging. The latter 
soon has a coercive effect. It would seem safest also that the 
appeal be general — not addressed to any one by name, since one 
thus addressed is often coerced by fear of having his compliance 
inquired into. Unions have engaged in so much coercion that 
where they are strong the people are fearful of incurring their 
disfavor. 

The Natural Cure for Boycotting will doubtless be suffi- 
cient to prevent troublesome resort to it, and to prevent a 
material change of law in its favor. This is the same cure of 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 221 

majority self-interest that has driven to hiding the various 
criminals who injure society. These would go free if those 
who gained from them were more numerous than those who 
lost. People forced in a boycott to incur loss are not likely after- 
ward to favor the union by which their trouble was caused. 
Many remember a strike with inward fears as to whether our 
cherished liberties are about to give way. More people are 
directly injured by the boycott than can be directly benefited 
by it. Resistance by the neutrals against whom the war is 
extended strengthens the employer's side. This fact will save 
society from boycotts carried to serious lengths, except here 
and there in a population composed almost wholly of unionists 
and of those dependent upon their patronage. Another safe- 
guard against boycotting is its effect to check business and 
lessen the employment of the boycotters themselves.^ 

^Boycotting is Now Very Common in those states in which unions are 
numerous, as it has been for nearly twenty years, being a part of the usual 
procedure in a strike. Injunctions stopping boycotts, which are generally 
granted by courts where the damage to the employer's business is impor- 
tant, have been frequent during the last several years. Men engaging in 
boycotts seldom have property to be reached by suit for damages. But most 
of the appeals^ to the public to assist in boycotts are made in a moderate 
spirit, without eifort to harm the many by whom the appeal is not heeded. 
Circulars setting forth grievances are distributed, and letters are written to 
important patrons of the offending concern. It now seems to be realized, 
as a rule, that moderation in the request is necessary to avoid making it 
oppressive, and hence a source of more harm than good. Union committees 
calling on merchants are generally careful in this respect. By large con- 
cerns doing business over a wide area, a boycott is often ignored. In 1903 
a boycott was in progress against the cracker trust and another against 
the cigar trust. One commodity on the unfair list, being made by scab 
workers, was a cigar bearing the name of a famous writer for the cause of 
labor. Now and then, against a strong concern whose opposition to union- 
ism is outspoken or otherwise influential, a boycott is carried on for many 
months all over the country, unionists using their influence as consumers 
by writing to merchants buying the concern's goods, or writing to adver- 
tisers when the concern is a newspaper. Such writing has often the desired 
effect of stopping the patronage. Union organizers everywhere urge lo- 
cally the boycotts they know of, and sometimes a union, besides publication 
in its journal and use of circulars, sends out a boycott agitator. To unite 
all local unionists in boycotts is a main function of trades councils. This 
peaceful urging of boycotts among unionists, and even the writing of letters 
to outsiders, seems now never to be enjoined. In a decision of 1898, which 



222 Getting a Living. 

Blacklisting by Employers is Their Boycott of a man who 

in their opinion has proved to be an obnoxious striker, as com- 
bination by employers in wage disputes is their union to resist 

enjoined distribution of a boycotting circular, and picketing that included 
intimidation and the keeping away of customers (never lawful), the Mich- 
igan Supreme Court said: "They may present their cause to the public in 
newspapers or circulars, in a peaceable way, and with no attempt at co- 
ercion." (See Chapter XVIII. for an account of the union label.) 

Judge Caldwell's Defense of Boycotting, made in 1896 in his dissent 
from an injunction granted by the federal circuit court at Kansas City, to 
restrain local unions from carrying through unions all over the country a 
peaceful boycott of machine-hooped barrels — seems to be in effect a strong 
argument on the other side, since his defense may be regarded as the ablest 
that can be made for his untenable contention. The proposition that it is 
unlawful for men to do collectively what they may lawfully do individually, 
he called a relic of the Dark Ages, saying that it compels every man to be 
a stranger to his fellows, and hence is hostile to the natural law of asso- 
ciation by men for mutual advantage. He said the unionists were enjoined 
from refusing to buy; that if such were permissible the court should tell 
them what to buy ; that if it could restrain them from refusing to buy, and 
from persuading others not to buy, there would be no greater invasion of 
natural liberty in its commanding them to buy the barrels and to persuade 
others to do so. {Labor Bulletin No. 16.) Such exaggeration and miscon- 
ception are rare in court opinions. Use of pleasanter words — agreement 
for conspiracy, and notice for threat — will not remove the serious fact, 
known from the experience of centuries and especially from that of to-day 
— that there is a crime of conspiracy, and apart from threats of violence. 

The Law is Liberal in Reasonable Combination, as shown above in the 
right to strike. For one person to induce third parties not to buy is action- 
able for damages, and that it is unlawful to combine to do what may be 
innocent for one is asserted in those leading decisions which are most favor- 
able to combination. The distinction seems clear, just, and surely liberal 
enough, that was first made in 1892 in the British Mogul Steamship case, 
in which it was held that by giving a rebate in price to get all of a cus- 
tomer's trade a trust may lawfully drive a competitor out of business, but 
that it is unlawful conspiracy to combine to do this for the purpose of in- 
juring him. This distinction, which Mr. Stimson thought in 1896 would 
be the ultimate test of unlawful conspiracy, has been made repeatedly in 
America, especially in a decision holding that it was lawful competition 
for an association of lumber retailers to agree to cease buying of a whole- 
saler who sold to consumers in their city, and for their secretary to give 
members notice of his selling. But it was stated in these decisions that 
those in the combination could not lawfully induce an outsider to join in 
their boycott. The rule for trusts of employers is the same for unions of 
workers, as explained above, and seems to be all that was contended for by 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 223 

nnion. It might appear that neither action by employers could 
be complained of by wage workers who had done the same 
things first. One employer is equal to a combination of his 

Justice Holmes of Massachusetts in his defense of combination as a benefi- 
cent and inevitable accompaniment of free competition. (Indus. Com. 
XVII. 552. Bulletin, Nos. 14, 16, 22.) It seems to permit all the com- 
bination that is wholesome, and much more than men generally care for. 
For third parties brought into a boycott, there is usually no gain, but loss; 
while their coming in brings to the original boycotters a gain too small and 
remote, and to the person boycotted a loss too direct and formidable, to 
admit of boycotting being tolerated. Not only is it actionable for damages, 
but so great is its power of tyranny that it soon becomes an attack on society, 
and hence is a crime against the state. If resort to unlawful boycotting 
were permitted to wage workers, and they carried it far, there would be 
the usual effect of injustice to fall on them heaviest of all. Employers 
would combine (as they have done lately in some places where unions 
abused their power) in an irresistible boycott not only of unionists, but also 
of those hiring them. (See Chapter XX. for a Missouri decision of 1902 
on boycotting and freedom of speech.) 

In the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 local boycotting reached extremes 
— hundreds of dealers refusing to sell to scabs; strikers marching out of 
churches to avoid worshiping with scabs; a doctor being roughly handled 
for attending the sick in the house of a scab ; operatives in a factory strik- 
ing to secure the discharge of a scab miner's daughter; and school children 
striking to exclude pupils and teachers related to scabs. In this strike the 
hatred of scabs was perhaps never equalled, sinking in bitterness far toward 
the level of the diabolical and being destined to continue for a generation. 
{The Outlook, Nov. 8.) In the Cleveland street railway strike of 1899, 
involving use of dynamite and protection by troops, and ending in favor of 
the company, business men organized a counter boycott against the strikers. 
Similar action was that of the citizens' alliance in the coal strike mentioned. 
In such organizations self-interest tends probably to lean too far to the side 
of the employer. 

The Strike Commission on Boycotting. "The right and liberty to pur- 
sue a lawful calling and to lead a peaceable life, free from molestation or 
attack, concerns the comfort and happiness of all men, and the denial of 
them means the destruction of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the 
benefits the social organization confers. . . . Carried to the extent some- 
times practiced, the boycott is a cruel weapon of aggression, and its use im- 
moral and anti-social. . . . To render their victim's life miserable, by per- 
suading and intimidating others to refrain from intercourse with him, merits 
and should receive the punishment due to such a crime. . . . It is tyranny, 
pure and simple, and no society that tolerates or condones it can justly call 
itself free. . . . Some weak attempt was made at the hearings to justify 
such boycotting by confusing it with voluntary abstention by one or manv 
from social or business relations with one they dislike. . . . The practical 
distinction is clear. . . . These practices [the violent boycotting in the 
coal strike] would be outside the pale of civilized warfare; in it women 



224 Getting a Living. 

own men, but perhaps a union of all the local workers in a 
trade might not be much exceeded in power by a combination 
of all the local employers. Combinations of employers are not 
greatly objected to by unions, and are not unlawful ; but black- 
listing has come under the ban of law more generally than boy- 
cotting, perhaps because legislators are more ready to openly 
favor workers than employers, and also because blacklisting 
is secret and more effective than boycotting, and falls on per- 
sons less able to bear the injury. Not only is blacklisting, like 
boycotting, criminal conspiracy, under the common law, but 
special statutes against exchange of blacklists among corpora- 
tions, and against other forms of the offense, have been enacted 
in many states, and by Congress for railroads engaged in inter- 
state commerce. Both being conspiracy, the Illinois statute in- 
cludes blacklisting and boycotting as one offense. A similar 
statute of Colorado was repealed in 1901. 

The Serious Evil in Blacklisting is that through it an em- 
ployer, by warning other employers against him, may be seek- 
ing maliciously to harm a man he has discharged. The likeli- 
hood of malice seems greater than in boycotting, because the 
boycotters hope to continue getting their living from the busi- 
ness boycotted, while the employer is not dependent upon the 
man he blacklists. By the secret blacklist, railroad companies, 
especially after the Chicago strike of 1894, are believed to have 
hounded many a man relentlessly, until he was driven out of 

and children are safe from attack, and its code of honor cries out against the 
boycott we have in view. Cruel and cowardly are terms not too severe for 
it." {Labor Bulletin No. 46.) 

It Was Proved in a case of 1888 "that the conspirators declared their 
purpose to 'crush' Baughman Bros.; that the minions of the boycott com- 
mittee dogged the firm in all their transactions, followed their delivery 
wagon, secured the names of their patrons, and used every means short of 
actual physical force to compel them to cease dealing with Baughman Bros." 
(U. S. Labor Report of 1901, p. 944.) Yet, if they did not threaten violence, 
they did no more than Mr. Gompers claims all have a right to do. In the 
words of Judge Taft, "it is clear that the terrorizing of the community by 
threats of exclusive dealing, in order to deprive one obnoxious member of 
means of sustenance, will become both dangerous and oppressive." 

The Weak Attempt mentioned by the Strike Commission appears in the 
following: "When statutes prohibit boycotting we have a relic of the an- 
cient and confusing notions of conspiracy. The strike is merely suspension 
of work; boycotting is suspension of patronage; neither is an infringement 
upon any right deducible from the principle of equal liberty." (Editorial in 
Amer. Federaiio?iist, Sept. 190:1.) 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 225 

the business.^ From ease of abuse blacklisting could not be 
freely permitted, even though the employer's motive was not 
malice toward the discharged employee, but only a desire to 
shield his fellow employers from an objectionable man. A 
person may become liable for damages if he voluntarily warns 
another of a third person's bad character, unless a reason for 
the warning is danger of loss to himself. But the employer 
to whom a person applies for work may be as particular as he 
pleases in requiring references, and in investigating the pre- 
vious record. To him the applicant's character and capability 
are properly matters of importance, and his inquiries, made first, 
previous employers may legally answer, without liability for 
telling anything that is true. Laws against blacklisting need 
therefore cause no hardship to employers. 

^C. J. Bullock, "Outlines of Economics," 437-40. Mr. Strong, attorney in 
many blacklist cases at Chicago, testified that fully half the men who went 
out at Chicago in 1894 failed to get railway employment again. (Indus. 
Com. IV. 132.) 

Blacklisting and the Law. The question of blacklisting has seldom 
been passed upon by courts. At Toledo in 1895 the right of a man black- 
listed to sue for damages was sustained. The charges there taken as con- 
fessed were that the Lake Shore Railway, and all the other trunk lines, had 
adopted blacklist rules. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 2.) In 1896 damages 
of $1,700 were awarded in a federal court in Florida, and paid, to a con- 
ductor, who, after being engaged and sent to learn the route, was not given 
the position because of a personal letter from his previous employer telling 
of his having left under charges. {Labor Bulletin No. 4.) The Ketcham 
case, in a lower court in Chicago, in which $21,666 damages were awarded 
in 1899, was continued for a new trial, and is still pending. The Illinois 
Supreme Court decided in a case in 1900 that there was no cause for action; 
that the usual clearance card given railroad men by the last employer is 
legal, but that he has the right to refuse to give it. Since the strikes of 
1894 the general rule in the West is not to employ a man from another road 
without this card. A Georgia law requiring corporations to give written 
reasons for discharging an employee was set aside in 1895 as unconstitu- 
tional, because liberty of silence is included in liberty of speech, and be- 
cause the law served no public purpose. A number of states have such 
a clause in their blacklisting laws. 

Blacklisting Held to be Legal. In 1901, in two suits in Chicago for 
damages for striking label girls, whom all the local meat canning firms had 
agreed not to employ, two circuit judges held this blacklisting to be legal. 
One of them said: "One has a right to decline to enter the service of an- 
other, and several persons, acting jointly in pursuance of an agreement to 

. 15 



226 Getting a Living. 

The Employer's Right to Decide Whom He Will Hire, 

however, can be but slightly affected by laws against black- 
listing. From the minute inquiry blank that railroad com- 
panies require applicants to fill out, giving information as to 
time of previous employment — besides the clearance card men- 
tioned in the note below as being legal, and besides correspond- 
ence with previous employers given as references — it is easy 
to discover, without any form of blacklisting, if an applicant 
has been an obnoxious striker, or is otherwise undesirable. 
-These minute inquiries are necessary, that the lives of the 
traveling public may not be entrusted to unsuitable men. If 
enacted, the most radical and unconstitutional measures pro- 
posed — forbidding a previous employer to give the date of a 
man's leaving, or to report him as unsatisfactory if the only 

that effect, have the right to so decline. So, one has the right to decline to 
employ another, and several persons, acting jointly in pursuance of an 
agreement to that effect, have the right to so decline." This case was car- 
ried to the state supreme court, where it is still pending. Its decision there 
a number of railroad cases in lower courts are awaiting. Three suits for 
damages, in cases of blacklisting, were decided against the plaintiffs in 1901 
by the Supreme Court of Kentucky. The judge said the agreement of three 
insurance companies not to employ men whom either had discharged was 
contrary to public policy and not obligatory, and that hence the refusal of 
two of them to employ the plaintiff was their voluntary act, violating no 
legal right of his, and giving him no cause of action. {Labor Bulletin 
Nos. 37 and 39.) It would seem, in view of this case, and of that of the 
Chicago label girls, that blacklisting cannot be prohibited if confined to 
employers previously united by agreement, and not involving the sending 
of warning notices to other employers. There would then need to be no 
correspondence ; the applicant's statement of where he had worked would be 
sufficient. The agreement might Involve no malice toward any workman, 
but might advance the several employers' own interests in avoiding objec- 
tionable men. Their combining here would apparently be balanced by the 
combining of unionists to keep workmen away from non-union employers, 
and to warn unionists to taboo men who had ratted — the latter warning 
being a permitted form of blacklisting. In Pennsylvania it was held to be 
lawful for members of an employers' association, in pursuance of a by-law, 
as In the lawful trade boycott described above, to notify one another of 
men who had struck. This ruling, It seems, must stand. If there Is to be 
a continuance of the liberty of employees to combine, and to warn related 
unions of scabs and unfair employers. In the recent upholding in Minne- 
sota of Imprisonment for blacklisting, the offender warned outsiders. (U. 8. 
Labor Report of 1901, p. 939. Bulletin No. 41.) 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 22y 

cause were his striking or his unionism/ — could only increase, 
it would seem, the present practice with railroads of adding 
new men in the lower positions only, promoting from them, 
until men leaving a company could have but little chance of 
finding railway employment again ; and until increase of care 
in hiring, over the general industrial field, diminished greatly 
the unionist's invaluable freedom of leaving and readily find- 
ing positions. Much ado over covering one's previous record 
indicates a lack of net desirableness, and lessens his chances. 
To sell labor, as to sell anything else, one must make it and its 
accompaniments such as the buyer will choose. His right to 
refuse to hire or to buy, for any reason, good or bad — like the 
employee's right to leave or not accept a position — is not only 
guaranteed by the Constitution, but back of it by the funda- 
mental industrial liberties that uphold civilization.^ 

The Blacklisting Trouble Has Already Been Remedied, 
fortunately, and by the one method of solving the whole labor 
problem — namely, by bargaining between employers and em- 
ployees that have reached an equality in bargaining intelli- 
gence, and in freedom to contract or not.^ This equality is 
necessary in any kind of buying and selling, to save the 
weaker of the two parties from risk of being taken advantage 
of by the stronger. Several of the brotherhoods of railway 
employees, by demanding all the pay that market conditions 
will admit for their respective grades of labor, but rendering 
for that pay better value in service than can be obtained from 
men outside their ranks, — have proved to the companies that 
only by dealing with them, in mutual reasonableness as in any 
bargaining, can best results be attained. Doubtless agree- 
ment was hastened, and may now be promoted, by the fact 
that the railway strikes of 1887-94 had led at last to public 
loss and disorder so sericnjs that a continuance would soon 
have necessitated enactment by Congress of laws taking away 
the freedom of hiring and of striking in the railroad busi- 

^Labor Bulletin No. 37. A legislative representative at Washington of 
five brotherhoods of railway employees suggests that no correspondence at 
all be permitted between railway officials as to an employee's record. 

^■See Chapter XIX, on Labor Laws. 

'See Chapter XXVIL 



228 Getting a Living. 

ness. Since 1894 there have been no railroad strikes of impor- 
tance. Those of that year were not engaged in by the leading 
brotherhoods. For these the victories and defeats of their 
earlier period of strikes were necessary to train both them- 
selves and the companies to the mutual reasonableness re- 
quired. Blacklisting of departed strikers and discharge of 
ardent union men, to break the power of unionism, which 
were a part of that costl)^ experience, disappear when by 
showing its merits, not by unreasoning coercion, unionism 
wins at last willing recognition from employers. As it be- 
comes settled, proving its rightfulness and the necessity for 
its existence, efforts to break it up are abandoned. Over most 
of the industrial field a man who works for his employer at 
least as faithfully as he works for his union, earning in full 
the pay he gets, and not making an}^ more discord than reason- 
able unionism requires, can now strike just as loyally as any 
one, and not be troubled about blacklisting or about weeding 
out of unionists.^ 

A Lockout is the name applied to the act of an employer in 
which, by closing his works and thus taking away from his 
employees the income on which they live, he attempts tp 

^Labor Leaders on Blacklisting. "Labor leaders feel, it would seem, 
that existing legislation has reduced the evil of blacklisting to a minimum, 
and if enforced will do as much good as can be hoped for from legislation 
in this direction." Mr. Wilson, chief of the trackmen's brotherhood, said 
to the Industrial Commission: "I do not think that very many railroad 
managers would condescend to blacklist an employee without he had shown 
himself to be reckless, unreliable, or unworthy of trust." Mr. Ronemus, 
chief of the carmen's brotherhood, said: "I believe the causes for black- 
listing will gradually disappear altogether, brought about by the genera! 
organization of the employees, as the unreliable will not generally be admit- 
ted to the organizations ; and by the general recognition of organizations the 
cause for discontent from this source will become less with time, ... I 
would not recommend further legislation." Prof. S. M. Lindsay says : "The 
real remedy for real grievances with respect to blacklisting will only come 
through the gradual working out of a system of discipline by the railroad 
companies by which a better record of an employee's services is kept, and 
through which better relations between employer and employed are main- 
tained." The rapid spread of systems for recording merits and demerits, 
and of these better relations between employer and employee, are described 
by Prof. Lindsay in Labor- Bulletin No. 37, Nov. 1901. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts, 229 

remove a trouble that is brewing among them, or to head off 
a demand from them which may lead to a strike, or to force 
them to accept some change in wages or hours he proposes to 
make, but which to them is objectionable. When occasioned 
by their refusal to accept his terms, or by his refusal to accede 
to their demands, a lockout is virtually a strike by the em- 
ployer. The noted case of the steel workers at Homestead, 
Pa., in 1892, is thought of as a strike by the men against a 
reduction of wages ; but since only 325 skilled men were affect- 
ed in wages and struck, while 3,800 were dismissed, nine- 
tenths of the affair, it has been said, was a lockout. In many 
cases, where there is a strike in one department of a shop, sus- 
pension of that department's share in the shop's series of 
processes necessitates the closing of all the other departments. 
This was said to be the reason why, in a strike in 1901 by a 
few iron workers of the National Cash Register Company of 
Dayton, Ohio, over 2,000 persons were thrown out of work 

Whether a Case is a Lockout or a Strike is often difficult 
to determine. Because the tendency is to think of the party 
that started the trouble as the side to blame, workmen are 
disposed to call the rupture a lockout, and employers to call 
it a strike. There is some reason for calling it either, as one 
chooses, when in one department the men strike and other de- 
partments are then closed which might profitably be continued 
in operation. Yet for persons not involved it seems sufficient, 
without going back to find who was in fault at first, to call it 
a strike when the men walk out, and a lockout when the em- 
ployer prevents them from getting in. In the publications of 
the British labor department the appearance of favoring one 
side or the other is avoided by calling all cases labor disputes. 
The general public in America, not familiar with the subject, 
generally call them all strikes.^ 

A Sympathetic Strike is one in which wage earners that 
have no grievance of their own leave their work in order to 
help thus the contention of other persons who have struck, 
or have been locked out. Where in a strike by men of one de- 

^See statistics of strikes and lockouts at the beginning of Chapter XXVII. 
Unionists, even when they call an affair a strike, often mention it as having 
been brought on by the employer's injustice. 



230 Getting a Living. 

partment an employer at once gets others in their places, or 
easily buys outside the material they prepare, their strike does 
not damage the employer sufficiently to induce him to yield ; 
but it may be turned from quick failure into success if support- 
ed by a sympathetic strike of all the other employees, many of 
whose places cannot be filled, and who thus stop completely 
the business and profits. In the great strike of 1889 on the 
London docks the skilled and well paid stevedores, or vessel 
loaders, without whom work could not proceed, went out on 
sympathetic strike, and thus aided powerfully in the success 
of a strike of miserably paid dock laborers, whose places could 
have been filled at once from a crowd of hungry men clamor- 
ing for work. Many other groups of workmen also, besides 
the stevedores, went out then on sympathetic strike. It was 
in the United States that sympathetic strikes appeared first. 
They were very numerous here between 1885 and 1895. In 
New Orleans in 1892 nearly all lines of business were sus- 
pended by a sympathetic strike for the sake of 600 draymen. 

A Sympathetic Lockout is one in which an employer dis- 
charges men whom he needs, and with whom he has no 
trouble, in order to force men to yield in a dispute in another 
department of his factory, or in the factory of some other em- 
ployer. In each case, by thus stopping contributions from the 
men locked out, he brings pressure on the others by hastening 
their coming to want, and also the moral pressure of knowing 
that their refusal to yield brings those locked out to want also. 
In England sympathetic lockouts are on record as far back as 
1786. They were very common between 1850 and 1870, often 
designed to break up the union, and were resorted to on a large 
scale in the machinists' strike of 1897. In America they 
seldom occurred before 1886. In a knitting mill strike in 1888 
at Amsterdam, N. Y., fifty-eight firms locked out their em- 
ployees. A strike by the New York furniture workers' union 
in 1890 was met by the employers' association with a lockout 
of all their union men. Leadville mines were closed for four 
months in 1896 to stop a demand from the workmen.^ 

The Natural Safeguard Against the Sympathetic Lockout, 
which at first thought seems to be a formidable means of op- 

^F. S. Hall, "Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts," page 48. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 231 

pression, is that generally it will cause more loss to the em- 
ployer than will the trouble he uses it to remove. When the 
latter is a strike in one department of his works, he will lose 
less by being conciliatory toward the strikers than by closing 
altogether in a lockout, which also, when known to be an 
attempt to starve people into submission, alienates public opin- 
ion. There have been English cases in which women and chil- 
dren in cotton mills were locked out to shut off support from 
their wages to men on strike. Where a number of employ- 
ers unite in a sympathetic lockout, to shut off contributions 
to strikers in some of their shops, to blacklist one another's 
men for the time, and thus to crush the union, each of the 
employers is strongly induced to break away from the move- 
ment by the facts that they are competitors, the others gaining 
business by reason of the strike against some ; and that in the 
high prices caused by the suspension each can gain far more 
by compromising and resuming work than from a crushing of 
the union. A large employer might clear more by resuming 
than the bond he had given to the masters' association, to be 
forfeited in case of his breaking the lockout. Such bonds have 
been as large as $25,000.^ In 1853, among cotton factory own- 
ers at Preston, England, who had agreed to contribute money 
to each one struck against, some were believed to have secretly 
helped to prolong strikes, in order to get advantage of the high 
prices. The full year's lockout in 1900 by the master builders 
of Chicago was adhered to until the end, few masters breaking 
away, and few compromises being made with the men, because 
the masters considered the federation of building trades too 
tyrannical to be tolerated, and felt that getting rid of it would 
be worth more than taking advantage of high prices for build- 
ing.^ This case was exceptional. The union of British machin- 
ists also, in the opinion of the employers, had become too 
unreasonable to get along with, and despite the large trade and 
high profits in reach in 1897, they continued their united lock- 
out for six months, rejecting all the union's demands, and 
freeing themselves from what they deemed absurd restric- 

'Hall, 72. 

■"See articles in the Political Science Quarterly, 1901, and the Industrial 
Commission's volume on the Chicago strikes. 



232 Getting a Living. 

tions/ But as a rule employers, especially in unionized trades, 
are not now disposed to try to crush a union, for usually they 
consider it reasonable, or at least a necessary evil; and few 
cases of the sympathetic lockout arise. 

Against the Sympathetic Strike the Natural Safeguards 
are strong, and will effectively prevent the tyranny of which 
it seems capable. It not only takes away the wages of men who 
contribute to the support of those striking at first on a griev- 
ance, but it throws the support of sympathetic strikers and 
all on union funds. Inflow of money decreases while need for 
it increases. The candle is burnt at both ends, and strikers 
quickly come to want. And not only is it true that the wider 
the area of the strike the quicker the exhaustion of the funds, 
but also that the larger the damage to the people the greater 
the public hostility to the strikers. 

^See the latter part of next chapter; also articles in Engineering Magazine, 
Jan. 1901. 

When is a Lockout Just? When in an employer's honest judgment the 
higher wages demanded would take away his just profit and injure his 
business, however competently he might perform his part, it is not only his 
right, but also his duty, toward himself, his employees, and the public whom 
he supplies with goods, to close his shop rather than concede the demand. 
But by reason of the dependence of working people upon their wages, and 
of the large employer's power over them, to try by a lockout to starve them 
into submission is a grievous offense against good morals, and an abuse of 
the trust committed to the employer by society, if he thus attempts to with- 
hold from them any portion of their just dues. What amount is just in the 
circumstances a fair-minded employer can usually determine. A sympa- 
thetic lockout, being an exercise of the employer's unequal power by means 
of combination, would be a worse oifense against morals, and could only be 
justified by clear evidence that the union was unreasonable, and that forcing 
it from its position was required for its own and the public good. It is the 
monopolistic control of all the employment, with the ease of applying the 
sympathetic lockout and the blacklist, that gives a trust its dangerous power 
over workers, there being no important employer to break away and grant 
the union's demands. 

Sympathetic Strikes Seem Allowable in cases where in one depart- 
ment of a shop a just strike not likely to succeed unaided is supported by 
strikes in other departments. This class of sympathetic strikes is most 
numerous. They seem allowable also in cases where the men of one shop 
refuse to do work sent from another shop whose men are on a just strike, 
and whose owner might win against them if his contracts were carried out 
for him by others. Taking unfair advantage of an employer with contracts 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 233 

To What Extent Can Trades Combine in a Strike? The 

hope of some, and the fear of others, that a union of all classes 
of workers, formed as one compact body, could effectually 
attain extravagant aims, were prominent, both in England and 
America, in the excited labor movement of 1830-35. That 
movement amounted to little, having no funds, and no system- 
atic organization. A similar semi-socialistic wave of combi- 
nation among all classes of workmen reached its crest in the 
United States in 1886, in the phenomenal rise of the Knights 
of Labor. The futility of attempting to unite trades of diverse 
interests into one union, or even of expecting radical action 
from separate unions by means of federation, has been shown 
by some disastrous failures of sympathetic strikes. In the 
spring of 1886 the Knights of Labor, that order then having 
a half million members, and having in 1885 won easily in a 
dispute with the Missouri Pacific railroad, started a strike over 

to be filled quickly is guarded against by contract clauses excepting strike 
delays, and by his workmen's knowledge that concessions thus extorted can- 
not long be held in new contracts he undertakes. Sympathetic striking 
against use of material produced by scabs taking the places of men striking 
on a grievance, is frequent in the building trades, and seems allowable if 
the original strike is just and needs such aid; though it is overdone, and is 
unjust, in case of refusal to use material made not by scabs, but by men in 
shops not unionized, and hence not using the union label. Carrying sympa- 
thetic strikes into disconnected trades, to force the pressure of public opinion 
in favor of the original strikers, harms the public too much to be allowable, 
and brings an aid too uncertain. Sympathetic strikes, though very common, 
and perhaps not usually resisted by law more than other strikes, have gen- 
erally been held by courts to be unlawful conspiracy, like boycotts, of which 
they are a form, since they are engaged in, not to benefit the sympathetic 
strikers themselves, but to harm the original strikers' employer. This was 
the ruling in 1894 in the boycotting by railroad men of cars of the Pullman 
Company, with which the boycotters had no contract relations. Benefiting 
the original strikers in that way is a form of altruism that the accompanying 
harm to the employer vitiates before the law. Employees may coerce them- 
selves by union rules, and employers or non-unionists struck against, but 
may not coerce third persons; still less can third persons combine to coerce a 
man not employing them. But as the original strikers stand ready to return 
the favor, and as united action by all trades furthers unionism, sympathetic 
strikes not too injurious to the public will doubtless be freely permitted as 
heretofore, the law expanding to include them. In Great Britain they are 
expressly recognized by statute. (F. J. Stimson, "Labor in its Relation to 
Law," 98.) 



234 Getting a Living. 

the trivial matter of reinstating a discharged foreman in a 
Texas and Pacific shop, and to boycott this company's cars 
called out railroad men in sympathy until the number of 
strikers reached 12,000, suspending freight business on 4,500 
miles of road. The result was that not a single concession 
was made by the railroads, and four-fifths of the strikers failed 
to regain their positions. The American Railway Union lost 
its head similarly in 1894 in its success with a strike on the 
Great Northern, and perished a few months later in its attempt 
to force the Pullman Company by means of a sympathetic strike 
on many railroads against hauling Pullman cars. In both 
these cases of failure the favor of the public was alienated. In 
the second case, aside from the merits of the Pullman strike, 
the violence and public inconvenience were more than the 
people could bear. The maritime strike in Australia in 1890 
failed completely, partly from public disfavor, but mainly from 
exhaustion of funds by calling out too many trades. It was 
not foreseen that workmen need their wages more than em- 
ployers and the public need their work. The sympathetic 
strikes of 1889 in London were a great success. But the cause 
was obviously just — the succor of helpless dockers, scarcely 
kept alive with irregular work at pitiable wages ; and the ab- 
sence of violence was remarkable, not one case in court aris- 
ing from the strikes. Never has there been another case in 
which strikers received such generous support from the pubHc 
of all classes, nor in which the cause of unionism was so much 
advanced. 

Sympathetic Strikes No Longer in Favor With Labor 
Leaders. In Australia there were no important sympathetic 
strikes after that of 1890. There have been few in England 
since that of 1889. The great strike of British coal miners in 
1893 was partly sympathetic, like that of coal miners in many 
American states in 1894 — the object being to show in labor's 
mute appeal its belief in the justice of the claim of the original 
strikers ; also to put on the first employer the moral pressure 
of being the cause of the whole trouble, and to prevent his 
orders from being filled at other mines. The latter effect some- 
times provokes public disfavor by causing a coal famine. It 
was to avoid this disfavor, to avoid breaking the union's agree- 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 235 

merits, and to leave many men at work to furnish contributions, 
that in 1902 it was promptly decided in national convention not 
to call out the bituminous coal miners in sympathy with the 
strike of anthracite miners. The American Federation of 
Labor planned in 1888 to bring out all or many trades in 189a 
for an eight-hour day, but later it was decided to make the 
demand at first in the building trades alone. Tliey were suc- 
cessful in most cities without a strike. The Federation advised 
against a further extension of the railway strikes of 1894. 
The Knights of Labor then refused to obey their leader's com- 
mand or request to come out, having learned wisdom from 
bitter experience. In the steel strike of 1901 there was some 
hope that other trades would be called out, especially railway 
workers, but their union leaders declined to advise such action. 
The great brotherhoods of railway men have long been decid- 
edly opposed to sympathetic strikes, and have repeatedly re- 
fused to engage in them. They realize that frequent stoppage 
of railway traffic, in its effect to close factories for want of 
materials, and to threaten with personal want large popula- 
tions depending upon railroads for inflow of supplies, — would 
soon damage the cause of unionism immeasurably, and put 
railway employees under time contracts regulated by law. 

Readiness to Strike Shows Inexperience. Mr. Fred S. 
Hall, from whose scientific study of sympathetic strikes most 
of the information here given is taken, points out that the great 
sympathetic strikes have been movements by young and semi- 
socialistic unions. The American Railway Union in 1894 had 
been prominent but a few months, and attempted to unite in 
one order all classes of railway men. The Knights of Labor, 
composed of trades of all kinds, and having hopes reaching to 
virtual socialism, had as its chief purpose, in calling out the 
New York longshoremen in 1887, the intention to prove that 
it was foolish to resist its demands.^ But its strike failed abso- 

^Hall, 80. Such was the report of a legislative committee. U. S. Labor 
Commissioner C. D. Wright (A''. A. Revtetv, Jan. 1902) says that, apart 
from the well managed railway brotherhoods, unionists have seemed to 
learn only lately the fact that while the strikers can endure a short stoppage 
better than the employer, with his contracts to fill, the losses of suspension 
are lighter on him than on the strikers after his contracts have been ad- 
justed. This truth is checking the readiness to strike. 



236 Getting a Living. 

lutely, with a loss of $3,000,000 in vv^ages to the men idle, and 
of $43,000,000 to others ; and was followed the next year by 
another absolute failure in a strike on the Lehigh Valley and 
the Reading railways. It had existed but six years as a non- 
secret society when it began in 1886 its self-ruining series of 
large sympathetic strikes, a trade union policy that the Knights 
introduced. 

The Exceptional Power of Unions in the Building Trades 
is due to their possession of a kind of monopoly. Buildings, 
except in partially finished materials, cannot be manufactured 
outside of a city and shipped in. The local men in the building 
trades, acting together in unions, and keeping away outsiders 
with the odium of non-unionism — sometimes unfortunately 
with personal violence — hold the building work of the city 
securely for themselves ; and in some cases, not a few persons 
think, they "hold up" people whom they compel to comply with 
their demands.^ In a growing city like Chicago they can exact 
very high wages, and where there is pressure for quick con- 
struction, as with the Pan-American Exposition buildings at 
Buffalo, in 1901, they can practically set their own terms. For 
these reasons, and also because the erection of a large building 
cannot proceed unless the men of the different trades employed 
upon it work together or in prompt succession, sympathetic 
strikes among them are usually successful. Any one trade 
engaged upon a building, when aided in its demands with a 
sympathetic strike by the other trades, can enforce those de- 
mands effectually. If one non-unionist is hired all the trades 
at once go out. 

The Exclusive Agreement strengthens this monopoly. It 
is made with a clause in the contracts between each union and 
the employers of its trade, by which the men agree to work for 
none who are not members of the employers' association, and 
the employers agree to hire none who are not members of the 
union. Outside employers and non-unionists are thus shut out, 

^A unionist in New York said: "One man let us strike for a month, 
but it cost him $2,000 to get the men back. We fined him full wages for the 
idle time — and now no more strikes for him." {World's Work, Sept. 1902, 
p. 2567.) See Aug. 1903 issue for extortion in waiting time, and for 
table showing New York wages to be 50c to $2 a day above those of other 
cities. Unionism prevents cutting under, whatever the difference. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 237 

and the public are compelled to accept the terms set by master 
builders in the association or give up building. It is usually 
stipulated that use by the men of their favorite weapon, the 
sympathetic strike, is not to be considered a breaking of the 
agreement. From these kinds of monopoly came the tyranny 
and bitterness partially atoned for in the tremendous losses 
and suffering of the Chicago building strikes of 1900.^ The 
cause of unionism has been injured by such abuse of power, 
it is not to be doubted, and to a very serious extent. A large 
proportion of the public, including many of the best and fair- 
est-minded people, think of unionism as it appears in these 
cases of tyranny, and in the violence and destruction accom- 
panying some strikes. By these things they judge it, knowing 
little or nothing of its character as a great and noble move- 
ment for uplifting the mass of humanity. For such reasons 
many good people are slow to recognize its worth. They 
feel that in unionism the bad outweighs the good. It is not 
likely also that in a whole year's results any trade gains from 
enforcing demands beyond what a fair and competent third 
party would deem just. Further exactions cause people to 
delay or give up building, and diminish thus the amount of 
employment in the trade, besides injuring the city's business, 
lessening seriously the employment of wage workers in other 
occupations, damaging the character of the men at fault, and 
turning public opinion against unionism as a whole. London 
bricklayers, as pointed out by John Burns, have lately found 
that by limiting their work to 500 brick in 9 hours, against 1,000 
in 8 hours in New York (this difference is claimed) they have 
checked building and are using up the union's out-of-work 
funds. ^ 
Mob Rule in Strikes. A bitter stage in a wage contro- 

^These are described in two articles by E. L. Bogart in the Political 
Science Quarterly of 1901, and in one entire volume of the United States 
Industrial Commission's reports, 1901. The tyranny of the exclusive agree- 
ment, and its possible future consequences, are discussed by J. B. Clark in 
Atlantic Monthly for January, 1902. In England this agreement is known 
as Mr. Smith's Birmingham plan, which was in force for some years in a 
monopoly of iron bedstead makers. See Chapter VII. of the author's book 
"The Trusts and the Tariff." 

^P. S. Quarterly, Sept. 1902. 



238 Getting a Living. 

versy, when the employer, in extreme cases, to protect his 
property and his non-union workmen, builds a high fence and 
liires armed defenders, is sometimes reached when reason is 
given up and force resorted to! There may then be a measure 
of lawlessness on the employer's side also — or at least a too 
ready taking upon himself of defense which it is the business of 
the regular officers of the law to supply.^ But he has a right 

^Neglect of Duty by Local Officials. Sometimes the mayor and the 
police officials, siding with the strikers for political or other reasons, make 
little attempt to suppress violence. Such seemed to be the case with Govern- 
or Altgeld of Illinois in the railway strikes of 1894, when President Cleve- 
land took charge of the trouble, and stationed United States troops at Chi- 
cago. In the Chicago building trades dispute of 1900 there was at times 
little systematic attempt by the city authorities to hold the action of strikers 
within the law. The Steel Corporation's removal of a great plant from 
McKeesport, Pa., in the steel strike of 1901, was said to be a result of the 
union partisanship of the mayor and other officials. Such a removal would 
be for the city a deserved retribution if to the employer it was necessary 
to avoid injustice, but would be a bad use of power if threatened to secure 
from this city, or carried out to secure from another city, undue favors. 
The heavy losses of removal would generally prevent it unless there were 
just reason. In 1903 officers arrested, and business men drove away, local 
union strikers implicated in blowing up a Colorado mine building. 

Hiring of Armed Defenders from another state has been prohibited 
by law in a number of states since the great strike of steel workers in 1892 
at Homestead, Pa. The anthracite mine owners hired in 1902 about 2,000 
armed guards (an average of four or five for each mine) called the coal 
and iron police, but the proceeding was made legal through the governor's 
appointment of the guards as public officials. The Homestead strikers, com- 
manded by the leaders of their executive committee, took possession of the 
steel works and of the town, like an army of occupation, located their forces 
at points of military advantage, using a cannon, and captured from a 
stranded scow in the river a band of 300 guards hired by the steel company 
from the Pinkerton detective agency at Chicago, killing seven of the guards 
and wounding twenty. The strikers found they had gone too far in violent- 
ly usurping the functions of government, and at once ceased their violence 
when the state troops arrived. The offer of the strike committee to protect 
the property was declined by the sheriff, since acceptance would have been 
surrender to them. The company probably had little confidence in the strik- 
ers, besides its intention to introduce a force of non-unionists. In a strike 
of street railway men at Richmond, Va., in 1902, quickly settled by arbitra- 
tion, a guard of strikers protected the property. Good brief accounts of the 
Homestead strike are given by Levasseur, by Spahr, and in the national 
labor department's sixteenth annual report. Some usurpation of government 
functions seemed to have existed also in the anthracite strike of 1902, as 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 239 

to armed watchmen, and to lead him to form a private army 
of mercenaries (also his lawful right when they are sworn in 
as deputies) the violent spirit among the strikers must be ram- 
pant and the adequacy or reliability of the official protection 
at least questionable. So it must be in the many cases, in many 
states, in which the militia is called out, after the sheriff and 
his deputies have proved unable to protect the employer's prop- 
erty and his non-union workmen. Unless the authorities are 
mistaken in their judgment of bad temper shown, and arouse 
it by preparing to restrain it,^ the lawless spirit among the 

shown in the testimony as to refusal of union officials to give a builder per- 
mission to construct apparatus for saving a mine from flooding. 

The Worst Case of Strike Violence on Record perhaps, was that at the 
Coeur d'Alene mines in Idaho. On the night of July 12, 1892, an injunction 
having been issued that day to restrain the strikers, the non-union miners, 
escaping across the mountains through snow, were attacked by strikers, and 
70 of the non-unionists, except perhaps a few that escaped, were shot down 
or drowned. Twelve hours later the federal troops arrived. (P. S. 
Quarterly, 1895, page 189, and Stimson's Handbook.) There the strikers, 
like an army, took forcible possession of the mine, and marched the non- 
unionists out of town as prisoners, not allowing them a sufficient supply of 
food. In a strike at the same mine in 1899 a concentrating mill was burned 
and two men were killed. Another case on a large scale was the murdering 
by strikers in 1885, at Rock Springs, Idaho, of 28 Chinamen who remained 
at work. None of the strikers were punished, but Congress paid $147,000 
for property of the Chinese that was destroyed. (R. M. Smith, "Immigra- 
tion and Emigration," page 257.) In June, 1902, striking coal miners in 
West Virginia attacked 25 non-unionists at work and killed 5 with dynamite. 
{The Independent, June 26.) As to the Cceur d'Alene riot of 1892, the 
testimony taken in 1899 by the Industrial Commission (Vol. XII.) may not 
agree with the above account in number killed; but the testimony showed 
that for 7 years murder or driving out came so often that men feared to men- 
tion the union, until the state, finding that it was a criminal body, sup- 
pressed it in 1899 with an iron hand. "The Idaho bull pen," of unionist 
literature, was a temporary prison in which about 400 men were confined. 
Most of them were soon released as innocent. 

^How Soon Should Troops be Called Out? An allowable reason for 
the opposition to the presence of troops is that it shows want of confidence 
in the strikers, who try to cover up the violence committed in their behalf, 
and claim that troops are not needed. Hence, to avoid provoking an 
ugly temper by uncalled for mistrust, as well as to avoid expense to the 
state, governors delay calling out troops as long as prudence will permit. 
Unionists have been in the habit of contending that the employer has no 
right to special protection from policemen or troops until such time as vio- 



240 Getting a Living. 

strikers comes first, leading to the presence of troops or armed 
deputies, and to their kilHng now and then of strikers who 
refuse to halt and disperse when commanded to do so by lawful 

lence is actually used, and generally the sheriff does not ask for troops until 
cases of violence become too numerous or formidable for the small force at 
his command. But the favoring attitude of the leaders toward use of vio- 
lence is a test of need for protection. The authorities must aim, not so much 
at dealing with violence as at preventing it. The employer's hiring of the 
coal and iron police was condemned by the Strike Commission, though they 
admitted that it is "a necessity as things are." It irritates the strikers, be- 
cause these armed guards are servants of the employers, not of the state, 
which seems here to have abdicated its function of protecting life and prop- 
erty for all at whatever cost The practice must have arisen from wrong 
on the employer's side, in desiring to handle men with more arbitrariness 
than local officials could be expected to protect, and from wrong on the 
latter's side also, in desiring to avoid expense and the responsibility of 
suppressing lawlessness among voters. 

The Unionist Dislike of the Militia. It is impossible to believe that the 
dislike of many unionists for the militia, with their bitter opposition every- 
where to presence of troops and to escorting of non-unionists to and from 
work, — rest on any reason less solid than a desire to get all the benefits of 
intimidation and violence in keeping non-unionists away. In 1902 resolu- 
tions against belonging to the militia were passed by a number of labor 
bodies in Illinois and Indiana, the Illinois federation doing so unanimously 
with cheers; and at some places there was said to be an effort to force with- 
drawals from the militia by boycott. A militia officer at Elkhart resigned 
under pressure. A painter at Schenectady, N. Y., was expelled by his union, 
and forced from his employment, for having kept his oath by serving with 
the troops in an electric railway strike. The awakening of the public 
throughout the country to the gravity of this desire to paralyze the arm by 
which the state protects itself, led within a few weeks to the Schenectady 
painter's reinstatement. The union's condition forbade service as militiaman 
or deputy. In 1903 forcing of men from the militia appeared in Pennsyl- 
vania, in many Indiana towns, and on a large scale at Austin, Tex. 

A Bill Just Enacted in New York State, to prohibit such anarchistic 
action, was opposed by unionists as an Insult to organized labor, and 
as an attempt to legislate for non-unionists and capitalists. How these are 
benefited by presence of troops, except in prevention of violence on the part 
of strikers, it is impossible to see; and why the objection to troops If the 
violence is not wanted by the strikers and is committed by outsiders? In a 
number of cases in the past, especially in the Pittsburgh railway riots of 
1877, and also In recent strikes in Connecticut and in New Orleans, the local 
militia, from sympathy or fear of boycott, fraternized with the strikers. 
The hatred of unionists was worst for PInkerton men, who made a business 
of serving as guards in strikes; the employers' few hired guards seem to 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 241 

authority, as about twenty were killed at Lattimer, Pa., in 
1897. Whatever the grievances of the strikers may be, how- 
ever grasping and harsh the employer, when by their threat- 
come next, then state militia from a distance, and lastly local militia and 
police, ov^er whom the strikers' influence is greatest. From the effect of the 
Schenectady incident, and of the outcry elsewhere against belonging to the 
militia, unionists have probably realized that a virile state like America will 
not hesitate to protect itself from foes within as well as from foes without. 
An evidence that our civilization is not to be set back was the recent capture 
in West Virginia, by a sheriff's and federal marshal's posse, of 73, and 
killing of 8, out of 150 armed coal miners, by whom the command to sur- 
render was answered with shots, and whose spirit was shown in the reply 
"To hell with the government." The grand jury indicted over 250; but 
as usual the affair was denounced in union circles as cold-blooded murder, 
and steps were taken (futile of course, as before) to prosecute the officers. 

Rioters Regarded as Heroes and Martyrs. Even with the wholesale 
and reckless killing at Homestead and Coeur d'Alene, the strikers involved 
were afterward applauded as heroes in the cause by prominent labor speak- 
ers, while hotly denouncing, even in these extreme cases, the use of troops. 
Aside from the small offense of showing lack of confidence in the strikers, it 
does not appear how the presence of the troops could affect their chances of 
success except in emboldening non-unionists by lessening the danger of in- 
jury. To ask for troops would seem to be the correct policy for strikers if 
confident of their innocence of evil purpose, as the strong position for an 
innocent person accused is to court the fullest investigation. Magnifying 
as heinous the final firing of bullets by troops, after due warning and after 
long bearing with insults and stone throwing; regarding the killed rioters 
as martyrs; and claiming in bitter hatred that the troops and guards pur- 
posely stir up trouble in order to discredit the strikers — prove opposition 
instead of cooperation in preserving the peace. While the rioter's zeal in 
the cause would naturally lead unionists to judge him leniently, they would 
just as naturally, if they were really opposed to violence and not desirous of 
gaining by it, condemn the acts if not the perpetrators, and instead of hating 
and obstructing the forces of order would unite with them in the task of 
prevention. 

"No Peaceable or Law-Abiding Citizen has reason to fear or resent 
the presence of armed guards or militia." (Coal Strike Commission.) 
Workers in militia companies called out in strikes are not serving for the 
employer, nor against their own class, unless the latter first break the law. 
The Waterbury union added to the reward for arrest of the masked mur- 
derers of the policeman guarding a street car, but did not prevent the 
murder by refusing from the first to accept the aid of violence. As was 
well said of the railway strikes of 1894 (Wright, "Industrial Evolution"), 
all this violence is worth its fearful cost if it teaches the public to discern 
its rights, and to use the adequate law it has for their maintenance. A 
16 



242 Getting a Living. 

ening attitude military force to restrain them becomes neces- 
sary or prudent, they are the immediate cause of the trouble 
— of the killing of men, destruction of property, straining of 
liberty and law, and ugliness of spirit not soon to be healed. 
To remedy grievances there is no lack of methods that are 
lawful. Whatever their anger, or its provocation, and what- 
ever their notions as to the sacredness of their cause, men can- 
not be permitted to take the law in their own hands. And 
besides, these attempts to do so fail nearly always to secure a 
net balance of desired results. 

Not to be Excused Because the Employer is to Blame. 
Hence, for these reasons — that lawful remedies are at hand, 
there being none of the necessity that justifies armed revolt, 
and that violence directly injures the cause of the strikers 
themselves as w^ell as society — mob rule in strikes can be but 
slightly excused by the facts that morally the employer is 
sometimes the most to blame of all, and that he has broken 
laws himself. In the history of labor troubles his record is 
dark enough. He unjustifiably exasperates the strikers, and 
is thus partly to blame for their lawlessness, when he arro- 
gantly refuses to negotiate with their chosen representatives, 
as the anthracite coal companies have refused repeatedly, and 
especially when he brings from a distance a body of Negroes 
or foreigners to serve as strike breakers, as has been done by 
coal companies in Illinois.^ The lawfulness of such action by 

community deserves its suffering when for fear of losing union trade it 
permits a strike body composing but a small fraction of its population to 
terrorize it for months. 

^To Thwart Unionism and Lower Wages, the anthracite coal companies 
long ago brought from Europe, and have since continued to retain, 
many thousands of cheap workers not needed, making employment last for 
only about two-thirds of the year. Besides, these companies have main- 
tained a close monopoly by violating the anti-trust and the railroad laws, 
and doubtless also have violated laws against company stores and child 
labor. It was for these reasons that the violence of the strikers in 1902 did 
not result in more injury to their cause. The anthracite companies did not 
defy public sentiment by collecting rent or by wholesale eviction of delin- 
quents, as was done the same year in West Virginia. The bitterness in 
unionism is mainly due to abandonment by employers of the old time consid- 
eration for employees, and to abuse of power over them. This abandonment 
was facilitated (i) by corporate organization, in which managers are only 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 243 

him does not make it right in morals or even expedient in busi- 
ness. Despite their striking, the dependence of the employees, 
and the seriousness to them of loss of employment, would 
require in morals some notice to them if the employer really 
desired the Negroes to displace them permanently, because of 
the Negroes' being preferable workers, and of their having 
then as good a right to lower the citizenship of his community 
as of that from which they come. But when the Negroes are 
wanted only temporarily to break the strike, there is pretty sure 
to be unfairness toward both them and the strikers, and for the 
future a further embittering of the latter as well as a reduction 
of their efficiency. As peasants have a moral and economic 
right to possession of their ancestral land, so the body of people 
settled in a community have such a right to a living from em- 
ployment in its industries, unless persons to be brought from 
elsewhere are clearly more suitable. The striking of the em- 
ployees does not give the employer a moral right to exclude 
them from the community unless the striking proves them to 
be unfit, unworthy, or incorrigible. His discharge of them 
would be such exclusion so far as they failed to find work at 
home and did not fall on charity. His moral right to discharge 
is greatly lessened when he gains power over his men by sell- 
ing them homes they cannot leave without loss, or by renting 
them houses from which they can be evicted. 

agents of owners far away; (2) by employment of great numbers and of 
foreigners, preventing personal acquaintance with managers; and (3) by the 
isolation of mines and local absence of a restraining public opinion. Under 
these conditions many employers have trampled on morals, and on far- 
sighted business expediency, keeping men in subjection by ruthlessly using 
the power to evict from company houses, and to discharge persons they had 
encouraged to buy homes. In England before i860, and in America after 
1865, there were frequent discharge of grievance committees, blacklisting of 
strike leaders, and requiring of employees to sign agreements not to join 
unions. A brief record of these facts is given in the labor department's 
report of 1901 on strikes. It was from employers' blacklisting that em- 
ployees learned boycotting, and that "victim pay" arose as a union benefit 
in England. Returning to the question of the militia, 

The Real Reason for Opposition to Presence of Troops, it seems, 
was brought out from Mr. Thorne, a union leader, by the British labor 
commission of 1894. He testified: "I did not try to prevent violence being 
used in any shape or form. . . . When the police are used I think the work- 



244 Getting a Living. 

The Legal Right to be Selfish. Nevertheless, an employer 
or other person must ordinarily be allowed to be as mean and 
grasping as he pleases, so long as he breaks no law. From a 

ers are justified in doing their best for themselves. . . . We were calm and 
submissive, and allowed the men to walk into the places, and the police 
knocked us about in all directions. If the police are to be used, by marching 
men into a factory, I do not see that the workers have any possible chance 
of winning a strike. ... I would have advised the men to run the risk of 
imprisonment in preference to starvation. ... I would on that occasion 
have advised them deliberately to break the law." Similar excuses for vio- 
lence were given by other witnesses. (Geoffrey Drage, "The Labor Prob- 
lem," page 329.) These opinions were those of new unions of unskilled men, 
whose places are easily filled. With the older British unions of skilled 
workers "the leaders deprecate violence on all occasions, and strikes have 
been peaceably conducted." In America also, violence occurs oftenest with 
strikers whose places are filled most easily. 

The Futility of Violence. Under Mr. Thome's policy of picketing, 
no union would be necessary be3^ond the ranks of the strikers themselves. 
The union principle requires agreement by so nearly all of a trade that 
strikers' places cannot be filled satisfactorily. Without such agreement, 
however just their grievances, strikers can have no remedy, other than social 
disapproval, against the right of others to accept the employer's offer that 
they refuse. One body of men can have no just way of raising themselves 
above others equally efficient who do not consent. Moreover, the possi- 
bilities of gain are generally so small as to make the violence useless. 
However hungry the poor may be, to help themselves by force would not 
only be wrong, but would also be futile, since very soon there would be 
nothing on hand to take. Similarly, however low the pay, one body of 
workers cannot hope to gain long by forcing on their employer conditions 
placing him at a disadvantage with competitors. There must be a union, 
and a trade must rise together. Showing disfavor below the line of force, 
and especially a separation of themselves by increase of their efficiency 
(this increase the employer will see without violence), are the only just 
and the only effective means by which men of an unskilled trade can 
unionize. The bitter, desperate spirit is uncalled for, and results in injury 
to those who resort to it. Few who use the proper remedies at hand, and 
strive to deserve, will fail in this country to get a fair living. And 
whether they do or not, violence will not help the matter. 

Archbishop Ireland, Discussing Strikes, in the North American Re- 
'uiezu of October, 1901, asks if pickets do not start th-i violence, and if 
unions should not earnestly protest against it, and vigorously prevent it. 
He says all. the state's power should protect the employer, or just one who 
wants to work, or to stop work ; that war by unionists on scabs is anarchy, 
promoted by the state's failure to protect; that it is sophistry to say a 
striker has a proprietary right to a job he has left (but see page 198) ; that 
for unionists to rely on law and public opinion is to succeed, but that to 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 245 

merchant of that kind, people protect themselves, and teach 
him a lesson also, by having nothing to do with him. The 
same remedy is all that may lawfully be resorted to with an 
employer. It is his legal right to be mean. The workman's 
right is to get away from him, not to force him to be better by 
resort to violence. If the unionists are better worth high 
wages than the scabs are worth low wages, he or some other 
employer will find it out, and the unionists will not fail to get 
a living if they use the means in reach. If the scabs are really 
to be preferred, it is to them that the work belongs. Their 
doing of the work successfully may first be necessary to en- 
able them to demand more pay.^ 

ignore them is to f ail ; that by the public the union's good purpose is for- 
gotten in its bad method ; that to condemn union abuses on liberty is to serve 
the union cause; that above allegiance to the union should rise conscience 
and patriotism. These are sound views, from a high authority. Of course, 
no notion of proprietorship in a job, or in a customer's patronage, can exist 
under the buyer's right to decide alone. Nothing but holding^ by deserving 
admits of justice or of progress under a system of exchange. To have a 
claim on a position there must be no pretense of selling labor at its market 
value, but such service as that of slaves or of sons, receiving not fixed 
wages but support. And the benefits of anarchy, beyond the takings of the 
moment, can never fall to wage workers, especially those who need help. 
Disorder now enriches only a few bold speculators or trust magnates, at the 
loss of all others, as the robber barons flourished in the turbulence of the 
Dark Ages. 

^Cutting Down Wages Below a Living Bate might be found contrary 
to existing law if done by an employer who had induced men to come to a 
distant mine. His contract might be held to imply a continuance of at 
least enough wages for support, and to imply assistance to return home if 
the mine were closed. Hiring sweated workers at less than subsistence 
wages was discussed in Chapter VI. Control by a trust of an entire indus- 
try would take away its workers' freedom to find other employers in the 
same trade. But this would necessitate no attempts at compulsory arbitra- 
tion, or at fixing of wages by law. First, men capable of conducting such 
a trust would hardly defy public opinion by oppressing workers unreason- 
ably, since such men know that labor cost is cheapest from workers well sup- 
ported. Second, to avoid making workers helpless, they cannot be per- 
mitted to feel that they must have work here or there, or in this or that 
trade. Under exchange, instead of the patriarchal system of Abraham, we 
live by doing what society wants, and to admit of progress or justice one 
must always be prepared to have society' decide what that is. Third, under 
the right kind of corporation, tariff, railroad, and tax laws, there would be 
no such trust that had power to harm. 



246 Getting a Living. 

The Rights of Property and the Rights of Men. To make 
opportunity for violence it is useless for unionists to oppose 
maintenance of adequate military forces, or to clamor against 
the rights of property by contrasting them with the rights of 
men. No body of people worth considering wants to take away 
by government action any of the rights of men. Strikers have 
long been allowed to go beyond their rights, and to indulge in 
lawlessness. As a rule, only minimum punishment, if any, has 
been imposed — partly because of the difficulty of securing evi- 
dence.^ But the rights of property will be preserved too, which 
are the rights of men none the less. There is no need to give 
up any rights at all. The people's approval of the use of the 
army in 1894 at Chicago was decisive. The calling out of 
deputy sheriffs and of state militia is no less a settled policy, 
to protect employer and non-union men in their right to be 
mean and selfish. This right cannot be curtailed by law with- 
out tyranny tenfold worse than its most heedless exercise. Per- 
sonal rights of employer and of non-union men will eventually 
be preserved.^ Viewing the future, Mr. Mitchell was right, 
from the standpoint of the miners as well as from that of the 
public, when he said in 1902, "If this strike cannot be won by 
honorable means, I say a thousand times it is better to lose it." 
If unionism is to stand, it must find a sufficient basis without 
violence. 

^In 1902 a man at Norfolk, Va., was imprisoned for two years for ob- 
structing street cars; and at Boston the teamsters' state organizer was im- 
prisoned six months for assaulting a man who refused to come out on strike. 
In 1900 seven Pennsylvania strikers were imprisoned for starting a riot in 
which a guard was killed — one being pardoned after two years and the 
others after one year. For the coal strike violence of 1902 two men have 
been sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years, and others for shorter 
terms. In the American strikes between 1840 and 1880, for the hasty vio- 
lence into which common workers naturally break out when exasperated 
by feelings of oppression, there were many convictions, and a few for con- 
spiracies; but juries often recommended mercy, and sentences seem to have 
been light. In 1903 the sentence of two New Haven teamsters was i year 
in jail for assr.ilt and 2 years in prison for conspiracy. 

^ Are Not Wage Concessions Often Gained by Violence ? Yet in prac- 
tice these personal rights are frequently given up, because to maintain them 
costs more trouble, danger, and loss than they are worth. This is espe- 
cially the case in strikes of street car employees, whose smashing of cars and 
injuring of non-unionists is at times notorious, resulting in the killing of a 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 247 

Above the Laws of the Country are the Laws of Nature. 

The people could not do otherwise if they desired. They can- 
not choose their laws w^th impunit}^, nor go far in favoring 

number of men. At Albany in 1901 some of the demands were soon grant- 
ed by the company, apparently because there was too much violence to be 
overcome profitably, though mounted troops were furnished by the state in 
large numbers, to escort non-unionists brought in, and to clear a way for the 
cars they attempted to take out. At Montreal in 1903 the company granted 
the union's demands after a few days of rioting. At St. Louis in 1900, 
though fifteen persons were killed, several hundred wounded, and even 
women passengers were driven through the streets by the mob, the result 
was that the company recognized the union. Are not strikers here bringing 
employers to terms by force? Then may not employers be forced likewise 
in other occupations? 

In the Monopolistic Street Railway Business, wages might be raised 
to a level somewhat higher than that of the same grade of work in occupa- 
tions subject to outside competition. But if at the rates of fare fixed by 
charter, the excessive wages, under progressive operation, encroached on rea- 
sonable profits, the service would be allowed by the company to run down, 
and when the public realized the cause it would so protect non-unionists 
that a strike to maintain the wages could not succeed. Perhaps the car 
companies that yield to violence are at fault themselves — are trying to get 
too much work for the pay, or are realizing excessive profits, which they can 
afford to keep undisturbed by not insisting on their full legal rights. Wages 
too high in street railway operation have probably not been reached. The 
opposite has been the complaint. If such wages were extorted, though the 
company's profit was likewise excessive, a strike to maintain them would 
scarcely be supported by public opinion. No doubt the apparent lack of 
restraint over street railway strikers is largely due to the public feeling that 
the work day is too long and profits too high, as violence in the anthracite 
coal strike was condoned because of various wrongs committed by the em- 
ploying monopoly. If in street railway service, a constant public necessity, 
the companies and the union do not soon succeed in bargaining peaceably, as 
the steam railway companies now do with the brotherhoods, the trouble will 
probably be removed by franchise regulations requiring notice of intention 
to quit work, and binding both sides to arbitration of disputes and to com- 
pliance with awards. Clauses to this effect are being inserted in a few new 
franchises. This plan was recommended in 1894 by Carroll D. Wright for 
steam railways, on which wage contracts could be regulated by Congress 
under its power over inter-state commerce. {P. S. Quarterly, 1895, page 
199.) In Great Britain and New Zealand, men employed in gas or water 
works cannot quit work without giving notice, under penalty of fine and 
imprisonment But fortunately the experience with street railway strikes in 
1902 indicates that the companies will follow the example of the railroads, 
and reasonably recognize the union, stubborn refusal to do which has partly 
excused much of the strike violence. The just terras to which a company 



248 Getting a Living. 

this class or that, as did King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, of 
whose power it was said, "Whom he would he kept alive, and 
whom he would he slew." Above the people are the laws of 
nature, which have not been entrusted to legislatures and 
courts. Many centuries passed before Babylon became a 
waste for the antiquarian to dig over; but in the delicate ad- 
justment of present civilization a departure from the estab- 
lished system of nearest attainable justice brings decline of 
production very quickly. The capital and business from 
which come our employment as workers, and our supplies as 
consumers, are difficult to acquire and maintain, as any citizen 
knows who has had experience. The intense effort of their 
maintenance and increase is soon relaxed if peaceable pos- 
session is endangered. Where complete justice has not yet 
been accorded to wage workers or any other class, effort to 
reach it must be taken by the orderly forms of law, to avoid 
falling further away from it. Now, as never before, are these 
orderly forms sufficient. The disposition of ruling opinion 
is to accord to trade unionism all it proves as its deserts, and 
to do for uplifting the unfortunate all that promises more 
good than harm. To guard property is to guard people, for 
whom property exists. The rich who own the most of it are 
less vitally interested in its guarding than are the wage work- 
ers, who depend upon the employment in steady production 
for their daily bread. To produce effects for the worse, dis- 
order need not be so extensive as to start a return toward 
barbarism. Any amount of it, from the least, is taxed up 
somewhere, and falls on the people, especially the workers. 
The business stagnation of Australia during 1891-96, during 
which many thousands were kept from suffering by means 
of relief work furnished by the state, was greatly deepened by 
some widespread and bitter strikes. Any violence from strik- 
ers not put down by law is calculated in with contingent ex- 
penses, such as possible losses from fire and storm, and is well 
covered by raising prices to the public or is avoided by not 

and the union can come by negotiation could not be departed from by any 
power of government, in favor of the workers, without taxing away some 
of the present value of the property, or taxing the people in higher cost or 
poorer service. 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycott::. 249 

hiring and not producing. Undoubtedly the Coeur d'Alene 
settlement in Idaho would be more prosperous if it had been 
more orderly. Employers must thus provide for losses in 
order to get enough net profit to pay for the trouble and risk 
of business. In different ways mob violence falls on the com- 
munity as a heavy tax, whether or not damages are recovered 
from the county, as was done to the amount of three millions 
of dollars after the Pittsburgh railway riots of 1877.^ 

But Strikers are Excusable in Believing That Something 
is Wrong, especially in Great Britain, perhaps where they see 
half the people held to a living of practically bare necessaries, 
and a third of the aged reduced to poor relief, while the few 
in the propertied class revel in inherited wealth. Many of the 
latter need do nothing — only be born. Two reasons why so 
much violence by strikers in America goes unpunished by law 
are a belief among the people that many wage workers are not 
getting their just dues, and a feeling that the violence is partly 
excusable under the conditions by which they seem to be 
hemmed in. The mass of our people also have a living nar- 
rowly limited, though not so scanty as that of the British, 
while the wealth of our millionaires is notorious the world 
over. Undoubtedly it is true that in permanent results the 
worst strikes, like bloody wars, are better for society than un- 
protesting submission to wrong conditions. Humanity's 
struggle for better things has always been at first more or less 
of a blind groping. Only from the costly lessons of experience 
can wage workers learn how to free themselves. A share of 
the cost of these lessons falls on other classes, in losses by 
strikes, and in the effect of discontent to lower efficiency and 
diminish production. Society means well in being lenient 
toward strikers whose violence, injuring their own cause, is 
seen to be but an accident in a noble effort to do the best they 
know to realize God-given possibilities. Is society doing as 

^This case, in which the courts decided that the county was liable and 
settlement was made on the best terms to be secured, seems to be the only 
important one of damage recovery for strike violence. Illinois has a statute, 
making cities and counties liable, and several cases have arisen. The city's 
liabilit\' would depend on what its duty is in restricting picketing, and on 
how well it used its resources in keeping the peace. 



250 Getting a Living. 

well as it means by assisting wage workers to find the right 
course to pursue? 

The Idea That They Are Being" Robbed by the present 
workings of the system of dividing the product into rent, 
interest, profit, and wages, is what justifies strikers, in their 
own minds, when they beat away non-unionists, and take 
forcible possession of their employer's premises.^ They have 
a vague feeling that they are simply taking steps to recover 
in higher wages what was always their own, and that the 
means adopted are necessary to overcome advantages cun- 
ningly secured over them by the wealthy classes. Their motive 
is not like that of the burglar or pirate. The fact is, in view 
of their unselfish spirit toward all common people, that the 

^Demand for a Share of Capital's Earnings was Made at Homestead 
in 1892. Improved machinery had so increased product that at old piece 
rates rollers were earning up to $279.50 per month. The new scale unsuc- 
cessfully struck against reduced their pay about 50 per cent, and the pay 
of 325 in all about 18 per cent, though by 1899 rollers were again earning 
nearly $200 in full months. Only about 800 belonged to the union (Amal- 
gamated Association), the laborers, about 3,000, being unaffecte'd in pay, 
their work being by the day, in three shifts of eight hours. The demand 
was similar with the Pullman strikers in 1894. President Cleveland's strike 
commission said that of the loss on certain contracts, only a fourth, instead 
of half, should have fallen on the workers, since the reduction made brought 
wages near to the subsistence line, while the company's $36,000,000 of cap- 
ital and $24,000,000 of reserve ($2,500,000 in dividends the previous year) 
suffered a diminution of but i per cent. C. D. Wright, in a lecture, implied 
that there was great injustice in suddenly reducing wages so low, and in 
keeping rents so high (under an autocratic rule and no effective unionism), 
as to throw practically the whole burden of the dull times on the workers 
and their paltry $600,000 in savings banks. This was doubtless true, but 
only in the sense that the employer ought not, and can seldom afford, to use 
arbitrarily his full legal power of wage reduction and discharge. It would 
be harmful to society for the prosperous employer to have to grant workers 
in dull times any larger total pay above market value of their labor than 
was necessary to keep the force in good working order for his own sake. 
To do otherwise would be charitably, or by duress of unionism or misguided 
public opinion, to make capitalists, or partial parasites, with positions hav- 
ing a sale or rental value (p. 142), a few clamorous men accidentally 
having positions with the Pullmans and Carnegies, while Injuring all 
others, in lessened supplies and raised prices, by reducing the reward for 
success In business (p. 143). See Chapter XIV. for discussion of the work- 
er's right to his job. 



Strikes^ Lockouts, and Boycotts. 251 

hearts of the trade unionists who engage in riotous striking 
are pretty nearly right. What they lack is knowledge and 
judgment. They do not realize that if the rich were freely to 
divide their incomes with the poor, the conditions of life would 
become far worse than they are now — would stifle the effort 
necessary for progress, and bring poverty to all. 

The Abler Unionists Have Learned that God honored 
man, not by placing him in heaven at first, but by entrusting 
to him the mighty task of working out his own destiny, and 
thus of being the creator of his own world; endowing him 
with a mind and a physical realm of wonderful possibilities, but 
doing nothing for him that he can do for himself. They have 
learned also that in another way God honored man, by en- 
dowing him, not with a nature incapable of sin, but with a 
nature given to serving self rather than to serving others, so 
that for good character possessed he has the merit of choosing 
and attaining it. Hopes of a good time for all, capable and 
incapable, under some simple system of collective ownership 
or socialism, are cherished by many of the newer British 
unions of unskilled men, and by the less level-headed among 
American unionists of all grades. But the deeper-minded 
unionists know that there can be no such easy solution of the 
problem. They have no such plans as those by which the 
Knights of Labor in 1885 expected quickly to regenerate so- 
ciety. The experienced professional and salaried leaders of 
the American Federation of Labor, and of the solid unions of 
America and Great Britain, some of whom have become busi- 
ness experts and capable economists, realize that the working 
class is to be lifted up by a line of self-help and public reform 
that must be patiently followed indefinitely into the future. 
Though necessarily partisans in their leadership of men, whose 
zeal needs perhaps to be fanned by some partisan agitation, 
they realize that very few of the propertied class oppress work- 
ers knowingly, or lack in honesty of purpose, or differ from 
what others would be in their places.. Adherence by able 
union leaders, in their writings and speeches, to fallacious 
notions, such as the claim that good wages depend on work- 
men's demand for a good living, not mainly on the market 
value of their labor's product, seems to be continued out of 



252 Getting a Living. 

loyalty to orthodox union doctrines, a loyalty that may be 
necessary to hold together the rank and file. When action 
comes to bargaining on wages, the leaders understand that 
employment is governed by market conditions not to be 
changed, and hence do not indulge in unreasonable demands, 
restraining rather, than fomenting strikes.^ 

^C. D. Wright says that as a rule unions now are friendly to use of ma- 
chinery, are studying practical economic questions, and are not drags upon 
industry. "The exceptions to this rule are now .so few that they need not 
be considered." {Contemporary Revieix), Oct. 1902.) 

Conservatism of Labor Leaders, "it was the council of the American 
Federation, acting with the chiefs of the railway brotherhoods, which re- 
fused in the face of immense pressure to participate in the railway strikes 
of 1894, and thus averted a disastrous conflict with the military forces of the 
United States. It was this same council that in refusing to affiliate the cen- 
tral federation of New York, with its 59 local unions and some 18,000 mem- 
bers, because it included a branch of the Socialist Labor Party, struck the 
keynote of resistance against the dangerous delusion that the emancipation 
of the working class can be achieved by placing in the hands of shallow 
politicians the business enterprises now conducted by private persons. And 
it was the same council whose policy, after an envenomed conflict of five 
years' duration, was vindicated in open convention by a decisive vote of 
^>796 against 214, and the program of the common ownership of all the 
means of production and distribution was declared alien to the trade union 
movement. . . . The Federation has demonstrated that the spirit of the 
trade union is essentially conservative, and that in the measure of its con- 
servatism it has become the most valuable agent of social progress. It has 
been enabled to transform the old time trade union forces into a disciplined 
army, only engaging in industrial warfare when diplomacy has utterly 
failed." This is quoted from a speech at Buffalo in 1901 by President Sam- 
uel Gompers, of the Federation. Every student of unionism should read 
this society's pamphlets, and especially its monthly American Federationist, 
Washington, D. C. 

One of the Most Hopeful Signs of the Times is that socialists and 
unionists, even those professing the more extravagant doctrines, are ready 
to unite with fair-minded men of other parties in sensible reform legisla- 
tion. To this union between radicals and conservatives, in an honest effort 
to promote the welfare of all, is due the enactment in late years of many 
good labor laws in different lands, and the promising movement for munici- 
pal ownership of gas works and car lines. The importance of turning in 
this way the zeal of the radicals to good account in legislation that is really 
needed, instead of driving them, by stubborn suppression of unionism, into 
a revolutionary use of their voting power in taxing the rich, — is the main 
teaching of Mr. John Graham Brooks's valuable new book entitled "The So- 
cial Unrest," which comes to the author of this volume as his manuscript is 



Strikes, Lockouts, and Boycotts. 253 

The Things to be Done, on which the abler labor leaders 
mainly agree with other thinkers, include the following. 
I. Acquisition by individuals of capacity to be worth good 
wages, to save money, to have things, and to think, vote, and 
live intelligently. 2. Development wherever needed of unions 
with which the employer will prefer to bargain — which will 
give him the best service obtainable, but will take in wages all 
except the profits, interest, and rent that nature fixes un- 
avoidably in the conditions of the times, and which will always 
be paid in some form to somebody. 3. Securing for the pub- 
lic, in taxation, in lower fares, or in outright ownership, the 
monopoly profits in railroads, telegraphs, street railways, etc. 
4. Removal of taxation from a tariff on necessaries, and 
largely from ordinary personal property, to place it where it 
cannot in higher prices be shifted over to others — that is, on 
inheritances and incomes, and on land, whose value, apart from 
its improvements, depends not on the owner, but on the in- 
crease of other people who want it. High value of the natural 
monopolies mentioned comes in the sam^e way. Only by the 
slow method of educating people to see the desirableness of 
these various reforms can they be brought about. Encourag- 
ing progress in this education is now being made. 

being finally revised for the press, and whose agreement with the positions 
taken herein confirms his confidence in their soundness. 



CHAPTER X. 
QUESTIONABLE POLICIES OF TRADE UNIONS. 

The Unionist Objection to Piece Work (payment accord- 
ing to the amount done) is regarded by many as evidence of 
a desire to prevent men from working fast, or worse yet, of a 
desire for opportunity to render less than an honest return in 
labor for the wages received. But there are reasons for the 
objection that are sound. It is most prominent in unions of 
machinists, who have long resisted vigorously the desire of 
many employers to pay by the piece. The reason here is that 
usually to each man there falls too great a variety of work to 
admit of piece rates giving on every job uniform pay per 
amount of effort required for execution. While there would be 
a chance of earning too much on jobs proving unexpectedly 
easy, as often as a chance of earning too little on jobs prov- 
ing unexpectedly difficult, the vital objection is that a piece 
rate varying from job to job would often need to be agreed 
on by the foreman with a workman separately. This would 
be giving up collective bargaining, for which the tmion chiefly 
exists, unless the trouble and expense were borne of keeping 
the union's shop chairman, or its local walking delegate, busy 
at the bargaining of different workmen. Few men are suffi- 
ciently expert to bargain on an equality with a foreman. 
Besides, some may be influenced by favor, and others by fear, 
to accept less than the union's standard rate. 

Piece Work is Desired by Most Unionists in Great Britain, 
or is willingly accepted, not counting those among unskilled 
laborers, and among men engaged in transportation. As a 
rule these must be paid by the week, day, or hour, because the 
amount of work each does cannot be accurately measured. 
Excluding these sections of workers, and not counting unions 
having in all branches less than i,ooo members, Air. and Mrs. 

(254) 



Oiicstionable Policies of Trade Unions. 255 

Sidney Webb found in 1894 that 49 British unions, with 573,- 
000 members, insist on working by the piece ; 38 unions, with 
290,000 members, insist on working by time; and 24 unions, 
with 140,000 members, wilHngly recognize both piece work 
and time work. By only 29 per cent of these unionists, there- 
fore, less than a third, is time work insisted upon. By a rough 
estimate of the British labor department, two-thirds of all 
workers, without regard to unionism, not counting farm hands 
and domestic servants, insist on time work, and one-third on 
piece work.^ By these figures, the proportion of unionists 
engaged on piece work is probably about double the proportion 
so engaged in the working class as a whole. 

Varying' Speed of Machinery Makes Piece Work Necessary 
in cotton mills, to save the operative from being sweated, or 
made to do more work than he is paid for at the rate contem- 
plated in the labor contract. Increasing the number of spindles 
and speeding up the machinery, things not controlled by the 
spinner, would almost certainly crowd him unjustly if he were 
paid by time, instead of by the amount of thread spun. British 
cotton operatives would therefore strike against time work. 
Moreover, in this improving trade, piece work gives larger 
pay when a faster machine is put in, and throws on the em- 
ployer the burden of securing a lowering of the rate. But to 
obtain for each operative pay exactly according to the value 
of his productive effort, requires an elaborate list of rates, ^ 
to cover every variety of cloth, material, and machine, and the 
constant services of paid experts, who alone can make with 
certainty the intricate calculations involved. In Lancashire 
two of these experts go together, one hired by the mill owners' 
association and the other by the operatives' union, which two 
organizations agree on the piece rate list by signing a term 
contract. The two experts, being evenly matched, and knowing 
what the list requires, protect the interests of every operative 

^Webb, "Industrial Democracy," 285. 

^The printed piece work list of the American glass bottle blowers con- 
tains about 1,200 specifications. Another elaborate list is that of the New 
York garment workers' union, which requires the price for a new style 
to be set, never by the bargain of an individual worker, but by that of a 
union committee. 



256 Getting a Living, 

and every mill owner, and good feeling prevails for years at a 
time. The reason for piece work in coal mines — payment by 
the ton — was the crowding of miners in England by butty 
masters, or subcontractors over a few men. Simple time work 
for the owner is not suitable in mines, owing to the difficulty of 
superintending small and scattered groups. Stonemasons, 
bricklayers, and plumbers have been vehement against piece 
rates, because their work is done in positions on a building 
involving varying degrees of difficulty. Being governed by 
the same conditions, it is probable that the division between 
piece work and time work is about the same in America as 
in Great Britain, though labor leaders in America, for reasons 
discussed further on, were found by the Industrial Commission 
in 1 901 to be decidedly more averse to piece work than British 
labor leaders seem to be by Mr. Webb's accounts. Perhaps 
the British piece rate systems are older, better settled, and better 
watched by union experts. 

Rates Become the Same in Piece Work and Time Work, 
per amount done, by the effort of each party in the wage con- 
tract to bring the pay and work to what seems right when com- 
pared with the pay and work of other persons of about equal 
skill. Piece rates are fixed so that the average man, at aver- 
age exertion, will earn as much as when on customary time 
wages. Under each system he then does the same amount of 
work for the same pay. But as the effect of more work to bring 
more pay in piece work leads to greater than average exertion 
and exhaustion, it is agreed by emplo3^ers that in piece work 
a man should earn about a quarter or a third more than when 
on time work. To get only the same pay for the faster work, 
sometimes assumed as proper because the time is the same, 
would be a grievous lowering of wages per unit of product 
and of effort. It is well understood by the employer in the 
contract for time work, not that the man is to do all he can, 
but that he is to do what is customarily accepted as a fair 
amount — all that the average man can do with average exer- 
tion. With trades in which both systems are followed, such 
as type-setting, the plain m^atter of books, which is easily meas- 
ured, is generally done by the piece. Then, by superintending 
quality alone, not amount, the employer is sure of his dues. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 257 

while by exertion the workman can earn more than the time 
rate per day. But where the work varies, as in setting forms 
for bill heads and cards involving all grades of difficulty, a just 
piece rate is impossible, and the work is done by the week of 
fifty- four or other fixed number of hours. 

The Proportion of Piece Work is Increasing Rapidly, a 
natural result of the present high tension of industry. As rent,, 
interest, and office expenses continue when the mill is partially 
idle, and as machinery but little worn must soon give way to 
new inventions, the employer reasonably desires to get the 
largest possible product per hour and per machine, that with 
low prices he may secure a large share of business before 
demand slackens. Prompt delivery also is very important, in 
gaining and holding customers. In many American machine 
shops, especially those of railroads, piece work is now being 
introduced, and workmen are often censured for their resist- 
ance, sometimes to the extent of striking, a long strike for this 
purpose being carried on in 1902-3, and with success, in the 
Union Pacific shops. Yet, despite over-suspiciousness in some 
cases, and disregard of demands of progress, workmen may be 
excused for adhering to a policy long followed, and for being 
reluctant to accept an innovation that may involve friction, and 
that is almost sure to endanger the standard pay for the daily 
product of average speed. 

Workmen Naturally Mistrust a Change. They fear that 
the employer designs to gain at their expense (or will so 
gain) as well as to gain by closer utilization of plant. If by 
a new system of piece work the amount earned in a day seems 
too much, the question of lowering the rate will arise, and 
previous work at time wages will seem to have been too slow. 
There might be cases here where deliberate restriction by 
workers of amount done would be excusable, to avoid up- 
setting the piece rate and making trouble. Doubtless it was 
experience that gave machinists their belief that piece work 
will surely lead in the end to lower wages — if not per day, at 
least per amount of effort. Unquestionably there is some force 
here in the standard of living theory of wages. Both the 
worker and his employer, as well as others who know of the 
matter, come to feel that a man should have at least the pay 
17 



258 Getting a Living. 

and the living to which he has been accustomed, but not much 
more than the usual pay of his trade and his grade of skill. 
If by a change to piece work it is found that he can increase 
his output materially, he will be in danger, from rate lowering, 
of being expected soon to do the enlarged amount of work for 
the same pay he had before. There doubtless have been many 
cases in which, from slack foremanship, the previous speed was 
too slow for the pay, comparing the work with that of other 
shops in the same trade, and with that of other trades of equal 
difficulty. But while there must always be in time work a risk 
of driving men too much or too little, the tendency of a work- 
man's average speed, apart from his own will, to settle at a 
point in proportion to the encouragement in his pay, will gen- 
erally prevent an employer from getting by any method, for 
the same pay, additional work from one already making proper 
exertion. The standard of living theory has little application 
to men so intelligent as those in the machinery trade, in which 
workmen go where their labor will sell for most, whether they 
need all the pay to live on or not, and in which competition 
leads employers to pay a rate very high when the worker's 
product is Vv^orth it, and cannot be obtained from others taking 
less.^ 

^To Insure That Change to Piece Work Does Not Lower the Rate 
per degree of effort, the rule of the British machinists' union is reasonable 
that a man must be paid for a day on piece work at least a quarter more 
than the standard time rate per day, even though at the piece rate the 
work done amounts to a smaller sum. By this plan the foreman must 
make the piece rate high enough for each new job, so that with it the man 
can earn a little more than an excess of a quarter over the time rate; for 
if not, the workman, knowing he cannot pass that excess, will really be on 
time wages made a quarter higher, while his speed will tend to lose the 
piece work pressure, and drop to the time average. For the same reason 
of guarding against a fall of wages per day, a man on piece work must 
be kept supplied with material, or be allowed to charge time while waiting. 
Without this the employment is only partial, and must be left if better 
can be found elsewhere. It is the piece work already established that 
workmen prefer, in which change of rate because some men earn large 
sums is never thought of by the employer. In introducing piece work the 
risk is that the estimate of necessary time to do a certain amount will be 
based on the work of a fast instead of an average man. The Michigan 
Central Railroad Company is introducing piece work gradually with its 
machinists^ giving time to understand it, and setting rates that admit of a 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 259 

That Piece Work Makes Men Selfish is a claim of some 
unionists that is probably based in part on the idea of its taking 
work from others. An answer to this would be that for a fast 
man to desire all he earns at his natural and average exertion 
(not strained and greedy) is less selfish than for a slow man 

liberal addition to earnings without harmful strain above the previous 
time work average of exertion. There will still be gain to the employer, 
from faster use of machines and prompter delivery. To avert suspicion, 
some employers confine new piece rates to repetition work, easily measured, 
and set a long time within which they are not to be changed. (See the 
magazine articles referred to on page loi.) Starting with a piece rate 
too high is unfortunate, necessitating an early change downward. To a 
regrettable extent the common mistrust of changes from time to piece work, 
and of later reductions in the piece rate, is well founded. Many employers 
have not only considered the fast rather than the average worker, but in 
the new rate have deliberately planned to lower the pay per unit of exertion. 
To Maintain Justice is Not Easy. The union rules to guard the rate, 
per day and per degree of effort, are nearly always reasonable and largely 
necessary. The whole system of unionism, which in the Webb volumes is 
shown to be a complex growth, from experience, of needed regulations and 
of successful self-government, has little of the shallowness so often assumed 
by its critics, and in some respects could be little improved upon by preten- 
tious scientific thought. The least addition to the difficulty of work, above 
that on which a piece rate was based, impairs the contract. Where the fore- 
man does his duty, time work at a uniform rate is fairly just, the aim 
being to employ only the competent. But usually with time work, and often 
under high wages, some men do more than others getting the same pay. 
The time rate is based on the average of work done. The fast must 
make up for the slow, the willing for the loiterers. It is seldom possible 
to find enough of the fast alone. The socialistic complainer of alleged 
injustice is often one of the slow, an exploiter himself, getting more in pro- 
portion to his product and utilization of capability than others who cheer- 
fully do more and fare better. The employer breaks his contract for average 
work of the average man when he induces one man to act as a "pacer" or 
a "bell horse," and set a faster pace for the others ; or when a foreman, 
paid by the quantity the men do, tries by driving them to get piece work 
speed at time work pay. The subcontractor or small master is tempted 
to do this v/hen he acts as the leading worker himself. On the other hand, 
workers afraid of doing too much tend to fall below the average speed on 
which the contract was based. Purposely going slowly to adjust work to 
low pay the employer will not raise, is adulteration of men, as making 
shoddy is adulteration of goods (Webb) — unless the employer, when the 
contract was made, had reason to expect such a method of getting even. 
Fortunately, in general practice, justice is approximated pretty well where 
each side tries in the spirit of fairness to do its part and to expect no more. 



26o Getting a Living. 

to object to piece work because it shows his slowness, and 
takes away his chance to gain from a time rate that either im- 
poses on the employer or is maintained partly by the fast man's 
product excess;^ and such a desire is less selfish than for any 
man to object to piece work because it crowds him from a 
trade in which he is not needed, by getting more work from 
machines, and thus cheapening supplies for society. Also, so 
far as it makes men selfish in refusing to stop to help others, 
it may be that previously the help was given in the employer's 
time to hide another's incompetence. Here, as elsewhere, 
ascribing a fault to others is commonest with one who is given 
to the same fault himself. It is true that by piece work a 
greedy spirit already existing is revealed; but such a spirit, 
instead of being made worse by piece work, is probably 
checked, by discovery of inability to cheat the employer in 
quality, and of the disfavor aroused by efforts to cheat fellow 
workmen. This idea of selfishness is doubtless connected with 
the socialistic intolerance of rewards and punishments accord- 
ing to merit, by which alone the effort necessary to support 
civilized society could be maintained. There is in socialism 
not only a desire to have the lazy exploit the diligent by re- 
ceiving beyond the amount one's labor produces, but also to 
hide the facts in the case, and thus save the lazy man from the 
disfavor he deserves. Though he were only incompetent by 

'Ought the Swift to Help the Slow? In an editorial The Independent 
of Oct. 2, 1902, says it is the duty of superior workers to help the inferior 
by keeping up for the latter the one time rate — that to throw the burden of 
a low rate on each slow worker to himself, and then to call the higher 
rate a mark of superiority, is to add insult to injury. To this doctrine 
there are serious objections. First, for the slow the rate can be raised 
very little; the foreman watches them the most, and men not well earning 
their pay are kept only during a temporary excess of business. Second, 
there is no humiliation of the slow if they do not thoughtlessly or enviously 
try to pass in a class where they do not belong. Such aiming at equality, 
besides being humiliating and vain, makes self-confidence and efficiency 
still lower, and even tends to pauperize, when there is thought of a duty 
on the superior to help. In every relation of life, men who keep to the class 
in which nature (not chance) places them are not troubled by the fact that 
others have an endowment larger. The latter help by advancing industry 
and civilization for all, thus increasing employment, raising wages, and 
multiplying goods and services. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 261 

nature, and faithfully did his best, it is yet unwholesome to try 
to make appearance's deceive. Among people keen enough 
for progress, one's incompetence can never be hidden, nor has 
he any chance of outwitting them. They will be most consid- 
erate toward him when there is no attempt to claim for him 
by deception. 

Other Objections to Piece Work. One of them is its effect 
to induce workers to strain themselves at first for the sake of 
larger earnings. But after they have become accustomed to 
it very few whose pay affords adequate support remain so 
nervous as to over-work unless they are of the ambitious types 
who in effort at self-advancement are in danger of excess 
under any system of work or in any occupation. The haste 
and nervous pressure induced at first by a change from time 
work to piece work are often felt also by a piece worker picked 
out temporarily for work by the hour, in his anxiety to deserve 
and retain the confidence placed in him. This confidence, 
shown in the appearance of not having the work subjected to 
constant measurement,^ is undoubtedly, together with the so- 
cialistic dislike of tests of any kind, an important reason why 
American unionism generally considers piece work as being 
on the whole a necessary evil, to be abolished if the unions 
had the power. Such opposition to the system prevails espe- 
cially in the unionism of garment workers, shoe workers, and 
boiler workers, all of whose payment is mainly by the piece. 
It is strong among the leaders, with whom another reason for 
it is their tendency to want all in the trade to be employed by 
dividing up the work in as small amounts per day as will suffice 
for maintenance of the union rate, so that lack of men to be 
hired will give the union power for enforcing demands on the 
employer. The prevailing piece system, however, is probably 
satisfactory to all those in these trades who are not specially 

^But men under time work are none the less compelled to earn their pay, 
and the anxiety about meeting the employer's expectations is often greatest 
in the high positions where the watching is least. Every case of time work 
too slow is balanced by another case too fast. The sharp competition of 
• to-day insures that the employer who is to continue in business will rarely 
fail under any system to get an average of work to pay that is not to his 
disadvantage. He will be too shrewd to overlook any effect that concerns 
him. 



262 Getting a Living, 

given to unionism, and is naturally preferred by fast workers 
and others who are glad for the chance in piece work to earn 
above the average. 

The Claim That Piece Work Necessitates Permanent Over- 
Exertion for all except the few rapid workers, in order for 
one of average ability to obtain wages that by time work might 
be reached with exertion moderate and healthful, is another 
reason for the union opposition to piece work. Is this claim 
sound? If, under the supply of workers that cannot gain by 
leaving the trade, the employer can hold them to a piece rate 
that is low for all except the fast, why could he not hold them 
to a rate equally low per unit of product under work by time, 
and thus lower their daily pay on time work as much as they 
lessened their output? The apparent answer is that under time 
work no amount of driving would get so large a product from 
them as they are drawn into turning out by piece work, and 
that as the same rate per unit of product, under the slower 
time work, would make the daily pay too low to hold the faster 
in the trade, a higher rate per unit of product, and per unit 
of exertion, would in the case of time work be really necessary. 
Hence, it seems to be true, as unionists claim, that piece work 
lowers pay, not only when too much is earned, under a piece 
rate based on time work too slow, but also when too little is 
earned, under a piece rate based on time work too fast. The 
employer apparently has a lever for sweating in the power of 
piece work to draw out exertion. But do appearances here 
accord with the facts? Would a change to time work make 
the worker's conditions better? Undoubtedly, on. the average, 
it would not. With the large number of women, boys, and 
cheap men ready to enter the garment and shoe trades, a 
change from piece work to time work that raised cost and price 
of product would doubtless be impossible, 3Tt if really effected 
such a change would lessen consumption, leave many of the 
slower workers idle, and thus after all, by their necessity of 
getting the work to live on, bring the time rate per unit of 
product and effort back to the low level of the previous piece 
work. After the change to the tim.e system those persons 
doing most or best work could get their previous piece rate 
earnings per day by separating themselves as a picked class in 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 263 

a union, but the slow or unskillful would either have to strug- 
gle along in this class by over-exertion, or take in non-union 
shops time work lowered in daily pay as much as it was low- 
ered in value of daily output. In short, where applicants for 
the work are so numerous that a piece rate drops to where only 
the fast can earn a decent living, the low piece rate is all that 
such labor power is worth in the market. To raise market 
price the supply of labor offered must either be diminished or 
divided. Doing the latter by unionism is practicable and wise 
where there can be, to the satisfaction of employers, a separa- 
tion of the better workers by somewhat clear lines of speed or 
quality. This is the basis of unionism's success in the many 
skilled trades. But where the lines of separation are not clear, 
or are not depended on, there are sometimes attempts to dimin- 
ish the total labor supply, rather than to grade it. The dimi- 
nution here involves the crowding out, by ostracism and fear of 
violence, of weak workers better entitled to sympathy than the 
unionists, or instead of this involves the more or less contin- 
uous support of these weak ones on the union's out-of-work 
funds.^ 

The Only Sound Way of Relieving Such Conditions in a 
trade is for large numbers to leave it. Unquestionably this is 
always practicable — in America at least. Both the anthracite 
and the bituminous mine workers, it is not to be doubted, could 
readily have bettered their conditions long ago by turning in 
adequate numbers to other occupations certainly not more 
laborious. A host of immigrants find new work each A^ear. 
Very probably the miners could thus have found an effectual 
remedy with half the cost brought on them and others by their 
frequently vain collective attempts to force a support for many 
of their number where they are. not needed — attempts involv- 
ing the unpermissible methods of resort to bitterness and vio- 

^The latter is carried so far in Great Britain that to unemployed mem- 
bers a subsistence at least, out of the union treasury, is guaranteed. This 
must be effective to bind men to the union, but no less effective to make 
them depend on it instead of providing for themselves. Such payments 
necessitate care not to admit too many of the weak. The American iron 
molders' union has supported, for as long as two years from the start of 
a lost strike, a few capable men who failed to find work. With unions 
generally the time of such support is short. 



264 Getting a Living. 

lence on the one hand, and on the other to piteous portrayals of 
their hard and dangerous hfe, with piteous appeals to public 
opinion in their demand for a living wage. Seeking relief in 
these cases by such unionism is not very different from seeking 
it in socialism. Unionism here becomes unwholesome, being 
depended on too far. No unionism, no sympathetic public opin- 
ion, no government socialism, no arrangement possible to the 
ingenuity of man, will ever keep away very long the blight of 
unemployment, neglect, and suffering from people who persist 
in wasting labor power and burdening society by staying where 
they are not needed, instead of serving themselves, and all 
others as well, by manfully seeking out, each for himself, the 
adequate support that in America is always awaiting self-re- 
liant effort. The same may be said of the women garment 
workers in New York, who persist in working at starvation 
piece rates (usually in hours too long rather than in speed too 
fast) instead of taking the easy living awaiting them in domes- 
tic service, or of seeking work in wholesome factories.^ 
Piece Work is the Most Just and Desirable in trades for 

^A Habit of Calling for Help Unnerves People in every condition of 
life, down to the child whose readiness to give up and cry is as much a 
cause as a result of his ill success at doing things. Many of those whose 
lack of balance on the realities of life draws them to the vortex of frivolity 
in the city, much as candle flies are allured to their destruction, approach 
imbecility when they weaken at hopeful effort to care for themselves, and 
give over to complaining of society. Jacob A. Riis tells of his inability 
to induce idle men in New York to do work at his home a few miles out 
of town, though he offered to pay the five-cent fare and let them travel on 
his time. On two different occasions, when he tried in vain to have 
some painting done at his home, an idle painter in the city, unable to support 
his family, gave up the struggle by suicide. Of a hundred families selected 
to be sent out of the city with help from the Baron de Hirsch fund, only 
seven were ready to go. "Jobs still go begging on Long Island. Kansas 
clamors in vain for laborers. The city is full of the unemployed. It is a 
sad story of loss of resources — of manliness, of independence, identity al- 
most. Only in the city's crowds are they happy. They have forgotten to 
think, or they have unlearned it." ("Labor and Capital," Putnam, 1902.) 
Such people the state will have to save from themselves, by varied educa- 
tion and by some compulsion (Chapter XXIL), as the Canadian govern- 
ment had by force to head off recently the stampeded Doukhobors, when in 
their pathetic fanaticism they went out on the prairie into danger of freez- 
ing and starving. People in such conditions become incompetents. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 265 

which it is suitable. In these it greatly reduces the cost of 
superintendence, quality being easily inspected, and no fore- 
manship being required to insure that enough is done in quan- 
tity. This saving and relief from risk raises the limit to which 
wages can be pushed. After piece work has been established, 
and the distribution of workmen among the different trades 
has been adjusted, it has no effect to reduce workers to idle- 
ness, however fast its regular speed may be. In a change from 
slow time work, not paid for too high, to reasonably fast piece 
work, with earnings increased at least as much as the exertion, 
there would be at first no injustice to be corrected, and by the 
change no injustice would be caused. Unless the lowering of 
cost of production and of price, by better use of machines, in- 
creased consumption, some of the workers would be left idle ; 
but their employment before would have been due to the fact 
that by slow work capacity was w^asted, and they could hardly 
fail to be benefited, and society with them, by their transfer to 
other trades in which they were needed. By piece work alone, 
beyond the gathering of fast men into certain shops to them- 
selves, does the naturally fast man get the advantage of his 
gifts. By it alone does every worker, fast or slow, get exact 
justice in payment according to what he does. The hope of the 
slow for aid from a time rate, averaged above their product's 
worth by the larger production of the fast, is sure to be blasted 
by unemployment. Employers know too well what they are 
receiving; besides keeping the time rate low enough to guard 
against uncertainty in average output, they are quick at get- 
ting rid of those by whom that average is not reached. So 
far as the slow need help, other ways of rendering it are better. 
Nothing perhaps is equal to piece work for drawing out what 
capacity the slow have, and for settling them in the work at 
which they can earn most and develop furthest. Over-exertion 
is not a danger to them, and may be no more likely with them 
in piece work than in effort to tighten their weak hold on posi- 
tions in work by time. And by piece work, far above other 
systems, is each man induced continually to approach nearest 
to that use of his powers which is best — to his own advantage 
in earnings, in character, and generally in health too: to the 
advantage of all whom he affects as a customer; and to the 



26^ Getting a Living. 

advantage of all whom his enlarged output affects as consum- 
ers. None are harmed at all except the few losing employ- 
ment by reason of the faster work of him and his comrades ; 
while these few are really benefited, and in the short run at 
that, by the change of their support from the tottering basis of 
a waste of labor power, over to a sound basis of actual need for 
their labor in some other trade — a need always to be found 
under society's increasing wants. 

The Unionist Objection to Working at One's Best. Partly 
from the desire to spread out the employment among all, as 
revealed in the preceding discussion of piece work, and partly 
from reasons less questionable, there is often noticeable, among 
ardent union men, an unmistakable tendency toward disap- 
proval of a workman's effort to do the most and best work he 
can. Among men at work by the week, to ''soldier" or kill 
time, and thus rob the employer, would seldom bring criticism 
or disfavor from other workmen, while not to stop instantly at 
the moment of quitting would, in the case of a new employee, 
at once arouse suspicion of disloyalty to the union — of being 
disposed to favor the employer unduly.^ This tendency of 
unionism is highly objectionable to good people whose ideas 
of work are those of the many districts and occupations in 
America in which ambitious wage workers easily pass to 
higher positions and to independent business. In these cases 
Franklin's early-to-rise and plow-deep maxims are sound, since 
the average worker following them is generally benefited by 
such action as much as is his employer. But in this matter 
trade unionists could scarcely act otherwise than as they do. 
The union rate per day, on which their standard of living 
depends, can be lowered as easily by doing more work as by 
taking less pay.- Caring for the interests of the union, in pro- 

^W. T. Stead, when in 1893 he tried life among the poor as a laborer on 
relief works in Chicago, wrote of the censure he brought on himself by- 
working too fast. 

^Overdoing Unionism. However, it seems, union men working for a 
struggling concern could afford to be somewhat liberal in construing the 
just rule not to lower pay per day by doing more work than was contem- 
plated when the rate was fixed. On the failure of such a concern, taking 
away their positions, its work might pass to non-union shops. Some fair- 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 267 

tecting the rate, is the collective duty on them; to get fair serv- 
ice from each man is the duty of the foreman. Doing one's 
most and best work would not be objected to from an appren- 
tice learning the trade, who in doing thus acquires skill and a 
habit of efficiency ; but a journeyman on time work who habit- 
ually did more than the expected or contract average, and did 
so Vv'ith obvious effort, not with an involuntary movement nat- 
urally fast, would be rightly suspected of trying with question- 
able motive to gain special favor with the employer. There 
is reason for this attitude also in the fact that the hurried, 
exhausting rate of the one man's work might soon be expected 
by the employer from others, with the feeling that the latter 
were not doing their full duty.^ Moreover, setting a fast pace 
by one tends to constrain the others to equal it, since it is 
humiliating to fall behind; and in group or team work each 

minded men have been turned against unionism by the conduct of work- 
men under such conditions — the workmen not seeming to notice that the 
employer worked the hardest and was paid the least, and apparently strain- 
ing their unionism to make their work inexcusably troublesome and ex- 
pensive. 

'Methods of Sweating Time Workers. Where employees are weak and 
submissive, and where, partly for that reason, employers compete unscru- 
pulously, the driving of time workers may become shameful. With a 
system of paying by amount done, measured each hour and bargained upon 
with each worker alone, Polish girls making overalls in Chicago are driven 
to work harder than under piece work. The task system in New York 
Jewish tailor shops has driven women out of some lines of work. In watch 
engraving, at some places where there is no union, 60 minutes is set for a 
job, and only 60 are paid for if the job takes 300. Paying for as a day's 
work a fixed amount that often requires a day and a half, is common 
among New York's sweated garment workers. At the Chicago stock yards, 
by speeding moving machinery, of which each man has to handle his part 
as it passes, the "amount of work finally wrenched from the men is some- 
times almost incredible as well as inhuman." Such methods- involve a 
reckless waste of human life, a coining of profits from blood. Some of the 
foreigners employed in the rush work of the steel industry go back soon to 
Europe to rest on their savings. (John Martin, P. S. Quarterly, Sept. 1902.) 
A superintendent said to R. M. Easley: "It is true, the way we have to 
rush things now makes it necessary for us to get in a batch of men, work 
them out, and then get a fresh batch." He spoke as if he were referring 
to a lot of scrub brushes. {The Independent, Aug. 28, 1902.) In all these 
cases of rushing, unionism is a crying necessity, and should be heartily 
supported by law and public opinion. 



268 Getting a Living. 

must keep up or the whole team is balked. Ordinarily perhaps 
there would be among unionists no objection to a man's work- 
ing fast occasionally, to show what he could do, nor to his 
doing always work of extra quality. Excelling to that extent 
increases efficiency, and paves the way to promotion.^ 

Union Limitation of Output is Rare in America. Apart 
from the few trades in which the unions have much monopoly 
power, limitation in any way by them of the amount of work 

Tines on Members for Fast Working, it was found In the British in- 
vestigation of 1867, were imposed by unions of bricklayers, of masons, and 
of laborers. Care not to work too fast, according to the published accounts 
mentioned further on, seems to be a settled policy with British workmen 
in general, enforced perhaps by working class opinion rather than by union 
rules. No doubt a feeling of this kind exists among workingmen in all 
countries, though unionism confirms it into one of its policies. The union 
of American flint glass workers strictly limits the day's work for its mem- 
bers. The union of stove mounters at Detroit does not permit its members 
on piece work to earn in a day over $4.50, the rate for time work per day 
being only $2.75. The union of tin-plate workers takes for its treasury 
the excess a crew earns above the amount set for a day, and fines each 
man 25 cents besides. Unions of machinists and printing pressmen forbid 
the running of two machines by one man. The Chicago carpenters' union 
had in 1900 this rule: "Any member guilty of excessive work or rushing 
on any job shall be subject to a fine of $5." A foreman rushing his men 
was to be fined "not less than $10 and ruled off the job." Albany molders 
at piece work are fined $2 by the union for earning in a day over $4.80. The 
national president of the window glass workers' union has been trying 
against strong opposition to induce it to remove its limit to the day's work. 
Garment workers have a maximum output, but their trade is subject to 
rushing. 

Killing Time a Third of the Day. At Chicago, In some work, the 
limits set by the plumbers kept them busy only two-thirds of a day; the 
lathers were getting $3 for a day's work limited by the union to 25 bundles, 
though some years previously they had handled 35 bundles for $1.75. Such 
loitering by local union rules Is condemned by the union's national officials, 
and by the majority of the rank and file, who know that wages depend on 
product, and that such loitering makes men unscrupulous and shiftless. 
(John Martin, P. S. Quarterly, Sept. 1902.) These and other bad restric- 
tions were abolished by the lockout of 1900, as were such restrictions of 
British machinists by the lockout of 1897. The present rule of the New 
York plasterers seems to be unjustified, showing no apparent relation to 
rushing: "It shall not be allowable for members to work single-handed 
where two men can work to advantage." For the same purpose of making 
more employment Is the New York rule requiring that the men laying fine 
glazed brick shall also have the coarse brick to lay. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 269 

to be done in a day does not seem to be a rule in this country 
to any important extent. The American worker's daily output, 
as measured by quantity and quality together, is well known 
to be the largest in the world ; and the desire of workmen here 
for very high wages leads them willingly to accept fast work- 
ing where necessary in order that wages may be maintained. 
This is the necessity in the absence of the partial monopoly 
possessed by both employers and employees in the building 
trades (page 236). Setting the limit too low would be harmful 
to capacity and character, and having any limit at all would 
tend to be harmful unless employers, because of high wages or 
for other reason, were specially given to driving. There is no 
trouble about working too fast or too slow where on one side 
are men of the willing and friendly-spirited class to which 
permanent positions are as far as possible confined, and on the 
other an employer who, not being short-sightedly grasping, 
knows that generally, even in the short run, a hurried speed 
will be less profitable than one that is fair and moderate. 
Whatever the employer's effort to have the speed of a machine 
set fast, or the worker's effort to keep up with it, the happy 
medium that yields best results in a week or a month can in 
most cases be only slightly increased without loss. Either of em- 
ployers or of men, the proportion not thus reasonable is prob- 
ably very small. Yet undoubtedly not a few ardent unionists, 
tending under socialistic ideas to hold back others rather than 
to get ahead themselves, need to remember that product makes 
wages. Too long in some cases, before a man loses his posi- 
tion, his work costs more than his product sells for. And if 
a man's natural speed were clearly exceptional, or his habitual 
effort, which would be likewise a natural gift (of industry), 
the effect would generally be to place him ahead deservedly, 
not to affect the average class, to which he obviously did not 
belong. 

That There is Only so Much Work to be Done, and that if, 
under fast w^ork, or long days, one man does too much he takes 
away the employment of others— a unionist doctrine every- 
where apparent in the preceding discussion — ^has probably been 
ridiculed too freely. Besides the good reasons already ex- 



270 Getting a Living. 

plained for much of the action of unionists in this connection, 
the doctrine of "the lump of labor" may have solidity when by 
temporary depression some men needed in the trade are idle. 
They are kept idle by allowing men with regular employment 
to work overtime. It is for this reason, as well as to avoid 
excessive fatigue, and to avoid depressing the regular rate by 
earning under it too much per day (page 258), that overtime 
is usually discouraged by a union rate of a price and a half — 
sometimes a double price for work on Sunday.^ To avoid 
rushing one year and lying idle the next, is a good reason why 
unionists object to overtime and high pressure piece work. 
This is discussed in the chapter on irregularity of employment. 
But apart from the matter of temporary depression, the desire 
of many unionists to do little work,^ in order to make jobs for 
others, is based upon a gross fallacy. This is explained in the 
chapters on the shorter work day and on convict labor. 

^Where much overtime is worked, even those men whose pay depends 
least on the standard of living, and most on firmness in selling labor at full 
market value, will be in danger of consenting to a lowering of rates, both 
by piece and by time, since with overtime they can still make good wages. 
Where machinists' wages and conditions in England are worst there is 
much the most piece work and overtime, the actual day being about twelve 
hours. Some firms have adopted piece work because under it overtime 
cannot well be separated. (Webb.) 

Allowing a member to work but five days a week, as was done by at 
least one American local union of printers in 1896, seems allowable at rare 
intervals, when by deep depression a reasonably high rate is endangered 
by presence of idle men who will be needed in the trade when business 
improves. (Chapter XVI.) 

2 The Rule Against One Man's Holding Two JoTds (another rule de- 
signed to divide up employment) could be reasonable only where he would 
be over- worked in attending to both; and here, if he received the union 
pay of the job rated the highest, the proper restriction, it seems, would be 
simply to hold him to reasonable exertion, and leave it to the employer to 
man his shop properly or bear the consequences. Where one position does 
not occupy all of a man's time, to forbid him to add to it the duties of 
another wastes labor power, weakens the employer's business, and injures 
societ\'. The refusal of the British union of iron shipbuilders to work with 
men who are both iron and wood workers must arise from the principle of 
holding two jobs, or of demarcation between trades — explained further on. 
{U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 33, p. 314.) This rule against holding two jobs, 
on account of its tendency to drive small employers to hiring non-unionists, 
probably does not exist, or is not enforced, where small concerns the union 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 271 

The Unionist Objection to Contract Work, especially sub- 
contracting, rests on its tendency to overdrive men, and thus to 
lower wages per amount done. Where the subcontractor 
works as a foreman, he gains in profit all the extra work he 

wishes to retain have good chance of success, and hence where employers 
have any reason of consequence for breaking the rule. That a union shop 
must employ all the time of at least one union man, the employer himself 
if no other, is reasonable, since if the concern is too weak for that it has 
no right to the standing of unionism. The same may be said of the rule 
that employment shall last, or be paid for, to the extent of at least one full 
day. 

Why Unionism Opposes the Small Employer. The union rule in 
some Chicago building trades, that but one or two members of a firm 
shall do a journeyman's work, is made to keep workers from uniting as 
partners and thus taking with cut prices contracts that would otherwise 
go to employers paying high union wages. Where the small concern can 
compete, wages may be lowered in this way. In Great Britain many sweat- 
ed trades, including hand manufacture of furniture, nails, and chains, are 
largely in the hands of small employers, working long days, in bad quar- 
ters, paying starvation wages, and eking out a miserable living themselves. 
As these small masters, doing much of their own work and driving their 
few employees, are so numerous as to set prices and wages in some branches 
of different industries, effective unionism in these branches is impossible. 
They take the trade of other employers that would be able and willing to 
grant living wages and conditions. Hence there is good reason for the British 
unionist's dislike of the "garret master." But in America, under the high 
wages journeymen can earn, and under the high quality and low cost pro- 
duction of large factories, small concerns capable of competing with the 
high grade employers paying union wages are rarely started by journeymen 
that would follow a policy of price cutting; while generally the small con- 
cerns that do get custom by price cutting turn out work of a quality as low 
as the price, and are not sufficiently numerous to trouble the union mate- 
rially. Outside of the few trades in which the union maintains artificial and 
monopolistic conditions, there is no strong temptation for a capable working 
employer to use his opportunity of breaking union rules ; and hence union- 
ists do not regard with disfavor the starting of union shops by journeymen. 
The complaint that unionism discourages efforts to rise is in no way proved 
by their just opposition to the garret master's scab shop. It is not only 
taking unfair advantage of employers and of workers in the trade to break 
union rules that are reasonable, but it is also poor policy with one who is 
capable. As to the incapable, unless they meet a public want by doing a 
separate grade of cheap work that the union rate is too high for, they not 
only fail to rise themselves by starting small shops, but have a tendency 
to pull down others. The cigar makers' unions were not sorry that their 
raising of wages betv^een 1880 and 1895 drove many small employers out 
of business, as their work fell to larger shops affording good wages and 



272 Getting a Living. 

can get from his men. As time wages are based on the aver- 
age amount done by the average man, workmen are just as 
reasonable when they object to doing more, as employers are 
when they object to accepting less. Yet it is the varying 
capacity, varying willingness, and varying trustworthiness of 
men, especially of common laborers, and the accompanying 
uncertainty, that upholds the contract system. As its esti- 
mates of cost often involve much guess work, its risks of 
charging too much or too little, and of slighting quality in the 
latter case, would undoubtedly lead persons now letting con- 
tracts to a general preference for work by the day, under 
superintendents on salary, if experience did not prove that 
under such day work too little is liable to be done, and that 
thus the payer of wages is liable to be imposed upon. The 
objection of workmen to the contract system is seriously 
weakened by the fact that in employment by the day for cities, 
at wages higher than private employers would pay for a good 
output of work of its kind, men often do a low average of work 
in quantity and value, partly perhaps because desire to win the 

conditions; but the change went too far, and a great trust arose, which 
now opposes the union formidably. 

Other Reasonable Rules. In desiring abolition by law of manufacturing 
for market in homes (Chapter XVIII.), garment workers' unions ask what 
would be unconstitutional and tyrannous, but it is reasonable for them to 
refuse, as they do at some places, to let a member work in his home, and 
for them to moderately oppose home work as injurious to unionism. Igno- 
rance of market conditions, and separation from the will-stiffening force of 
association with one's fellows makes home workers almost sure, in their 
separate bargaining with the shrewd and unscrupulous employer, to yield 
to him, falling under sweating themselves and exposing all to it, by prom- 
ising work too soon and toiling overtime, by taking piece rates too low, and 
by furnishing thread, space, light, and heat. Also, unions need jealously 
to watch the fines commonly imposed on employees in textile mills and in 
stores for bad work. These, now decreasing, may be proper, like company 
stores, but may be used to covertly lower wages. Many employers avoid 
temptation and avert suspicion by having all fines to go to the employees' 
aid fund. There are many ways of loAvering pay. The recent contest in 
Pennsylvania as to whether the bridle was a part of the harness may not 
have been foolish. An extra duty is important when it may become per- 
manent. Railroad men need to demand more pay when engines become 
larger and trains longer. Car fare and walking time are important to 
building workmen in large cities. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 273 

favor of laborers as voters leads to the hiring- of inefficient men 
and to lax superintendence. The emphasis placed on quality 
of work by wage earners opposing the contract system, as by 
those opposing piece work, is beside the point when not readily 
agreed with by the man who does the paying. He must be 
allowed to decide which quality he prefers at the price, and 
whether to take the chances of being imposed on by workmen 
he might hire directly or by a contractor. 

The Solid Basis- of Contracting. The fact is that the con- 
tract system rests on a basis no less solid than the necessity of 
allowing the employer his profits. The man letting the con- 
tract for erecting a house is not a professional builder, and has 
no time to spare if he were. He is glad to pay a responsible 
contractor any profits set by competitive bidding, since the 
excess of these profits over the salary he would need to pay a 
capable superintendent, to direct workers he might hire di- 
rectly by the day, would be a reasonable payment for his avoid- 
ance of risk from the superintendent's mistakes in buying and 
planning, and from the latter's neglect to do good work him- 
self or to secure it from the others. Without a contractor the 
work is too far removed from the eye of the master. As the 
buyer of labor he needs to see what he is getting, for the same 
reason that the buyer of goods shipped in needs to check them 
over by the invoice. The clamor of wage earners for day work 
from cities, instead of contract work, involves clearly, but per- 
haps unconsciously, a desire as a voter, with political influence, 
to stand in the place of the employer and hire one's self as an 
employee, but with the money of other people — the taxpayers.^ 

^Where Day Work for the City is Best. In many cases the city's 
superintendents do really serve the people as a whole, not simply its own 
employees, and thus have an employer actually present. Superintendents 
that are masters of the kind of work done may save for the city, from the 
contractor's profits, more than a fair allowance for the risk the city bears 
in buying and hiring, and may not incur much more cost in superintending 
direct workers than would be required to secure honest construction from 
a contractor. Wherever the city can thus secure unquestionably better net 
value, it ought of course to do so. There is good reason for the fact that 
the contract system is more troublesome with public than with private 
work, since the public body lacks the individual's freedom to reject the 
lowest bid, and to pick out the bidder deemed most reliable, and since such 
a body does not spend its own money. It is difficult to overcome a con- 
18 



274 Getting a Living. 

Here is the same fatal flaw that there is in self-hiring coopera- 
tion (page 85), and that there would be (but never will be 
very long before the break-down) in a socialism ruled by 
workers producing less market value than each hopes to get, 
by means of sharing directly the larger product of others 
more capable, in addition to the present and only possible 
sharing of such product through increase of capital and 
lowering of prices to consumers. The same flaw of adverse 
interest is recognized in the illegality of a partner's buying 
things from himself for his firm. 

As to the Lowering of Market Wages by the Contract 
System, ^ no reason appears why a contractor or a subcontractor 
regularly in the business, and needing good men for the future, 
would drive them any more than other employers, every one of 
whom gains at the day rate all the extra work he can exact. 
Competitive bidding lowers income from which to pay wages, 
but so it does in all trades doing job work to order, and falling 
prices may lower it still more in trades selling from stock Such 
lowering of prices, by men capable of conducting business, in- 
creases customers, sales, aggregate profit, and supply of goods to 
society, besides increasing employment, and hence raise wages. 

tractor's unreliability or dishonesty by enforcing his bond. In public busi- 
ness justice to the taxpayers and all requires great fidelity in officials, and 
high civic virtue in voters. The difficulty here, doubtless never to be fully 
overcome, reveals the impossibility of any approach to complete socialism. 
(See Chapter V. of the author's book, "The Trusts and the Tariff.") 

^Market Wages, not artificially high wages paid by the city, which are not 
expected from private employers, and hence are lowered of course when 
the work passes from the city to a contractor, or only the efficient are hired. 

Unionism's Higher Value of Work for Higher Wages. If the con- 
tractor paying union wages cannot prove an excess of net value balanc- 
ing the excess in his bid, if the latter excess is necessary, there is a lack of 
unionism's superiority of service, usually true of quantity and quality 
together, as fixing product value. It is by this superiority that unionism 
is mainly justified, its claim being that value for value its product costs the 
less. But this claim seems not to be made in the case of the sweated, and 
of such unskilled laborers as the employees of cities, who are chiefly con- 
cerned in the contract controversy, and whose unionism is necessarily weak 
against the mass of outsiders fitted to take their places. With these 
laborers the appeal for more pay rests less on market value of work than on 
the living wage principle. (Chapters XII. and XV.) Perhaps there will 
always be a tendency to bestow charity by raising the wages of public 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 275 

The subcontractor is close to his men, and gets all his dues, but 
no more so than the thousands of other small employers, many of 
whom, in dealing with employees, are very careful to be just, 
knowing from experience in their position where they deserve 
kindly consideration, as well as where they need sharp watch- 
ing. Wage earners should try of course to avoid being sweat- 
ed, but should not try so far as to object to being under the 
employer's eye. It seems to be overlooked that the disappear- 
ance of the small employer, whose tendency to drive and to 
lengthen the day is especially mistrusted by Mr. Webb, was 
the reason for the rise of trade unionism at first, because the 
change to large industries deprived workers of their position 
of equality with their employer, which equality is ordinarily an 
advantage to them, overbalancing his knowledge of what they 
are doing and can be made to do. Among skilled workmen 
close oversight is not very important, because under high 
wages men who do not habitually do a fair day's work are soon 
weeded out of a trade. Effort to drive unionists beyond the 

employees, though others capable of self-support can never hope for pay of 
any consequence above market value of work done. (Chapters VI. 
and XIV.) 

The Law of California and of other commonwealths, notably those of 
Australia, that city work may not be done by contract, seems unconstitu- 
tional by the New York decision (Chapter XIX.) that in local affairs the 
cit}^ is not the agent of the legislature, but is independent, like a private 
corporation, and cannot be required by the legislature to waste taxpayers' 
money. No reason for such a law appears except to favor workers with 
hidden charity by preventing the cit\- from doing the best for itself. If the 
city's officials will let contractors impose on it, they will let workers do so 
too. If contractors sweat workers, the little work the cit}- has done will 
not help many of them, but will tend to pauperize the class by inducing 
them to relax self-reliance and sink deeper into helplessness. (Chapters 
XV. and XVIII.) 

Contracting Does Not Lower but Raises Wages. As it was the rise of 
employers that chiefly made civilization, bringing inventions, and immeas- 
urably increasing employment, raising wages, and multiplying goods, so 
the contractor, instead of taking his profits from his men's wages, increases 
employment and pay by doubling the amount of building that would be 
done if people had to take their chances with men hired directly. And 
whatever disadvantage to workers there is in contracting, each can escape 
for' himself. By proving that he needs no watching, each can get in extra 
wages what is withheld from others to pay for oversight. 



2"]^ • Getting a Living. 

just speed contemplated in the contract would usually be un- 
profitable, provoking their resentment. This is probably true 
of any workers, including unskilled city laborers, who obvious- 
ly are doing their full duty. The workman who, by reason of 
faithfulness and intelligent efficiency, proves that he needs no 
close superintendence, will rarely be troubled by driving or by 
too much watching. Not many employers or foremen are so 
short-sighted as needlessly to provoke ill will from their men. 
This means that for workers who make any reasonable effort 
to look out for themselves, by keeping informed as to other 
employment in reach, the com.plaint against the contractor is 
practically groundless. The only class liable to be imposed 
upon by the contractor are the ignorant and helpless sweated, 
who, being able neither to sell labor nor to buy goods, must 
be protected in many ways by the state, and with all it can do 
for them they are sure to suffer until educated up to the plane 
of manly self-direction. 

Striking Against an Obnoxious Foreman would seem to be 
allowable if he were trying to undermine the union, or if he 
were given to unfair dealing. The union's shop chairman, a 
workman whose official duty it is to see that all union rules are 
observed, could not spare time, especially if he were on piece 
work, to be constantly watching the foreman and investigating 
the complaints of the men ; while hiring a walking delegate, 
to give all his time to such investigation, and to collecting dues, 
would ordinarily be too expensive to the local union unless its 
membership were large. Though the men and the chairman 
might be too ready to assert the authority of the union, and 
might make it a very disagreeable force, yet to strike for the 
discharge of a foreman believed to be preparing to rat the shop 
might be necessary to save the men and the union from serious 
loss. To promote peace, an employer usually tries to have a 
foreman satisfactory to his men. To strike for reinstatement 
of a foreman, sometimes done when he is believed to have been 
discharged for his unionism, seems difficult to justify. His 
duty is to look out for the employer, others being present to 
look out for themselves and for the union. If he did not fulfill 
this duty, the employer would not be represented. A customer 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 277 

might as well desire to measure goods for himself in a store, 
with no salesman near. It is wrong for the foreman to do for 
the men any more than bare justice. Only the employer him- 
self has the right to be generous. Special friendship from 
the men toward the foreman, the employer might reasonably 
mistrust. In view of these facts a union striking on other 
grievances provides sometimes that the foreman is to remain 
on duty. For the same reason some unions do not admit fore- 
men to active membership, and perhaps any or most of them 
would permit a foreman to be a non-member if he did none of 
the work of ordinary journeymen.^ Yet to avoid gradual ex- 
pulsion of a union from a shop, it seems proper to insist on 
retention of men other than the foreman who are objected to 
solely because of a unionism that is not immoderate or pestif- 
erous. 

The Employer's Right to Manage His Own Business is 
often asserted, under the influence of old notions of obedience, 
as a truth too plain to be discussed. Yet on a moment's 
thought it is obvious that any regulation affecting the pay, the 
hours, the speed, the fellow workmen, or the service in any 

^In regard to foremen, as in other matters, unions in the building trades 
of large cities exert their monopoly power. As to foremen who are free to 
hire or discharge, a walking delegate, who had authority over foremen 
in this respect, said to M. G. Cunniff — "Don't want 'em ; they couldn't serve 
us and serve the boss too." [World's Work, Sept. 1902.) The employers' 
association of New York plasterers recently enforced a lockout against the 
union's demand for the right to appoint foremen, and for increase of pay 
from $4.50 to $5 a day. Evidently W. A. Wyckoff, who has closely studied 
the workers of many states, was correct when he said, "Undoubtedly trades 
unions of a certain type are seriously reactionary and obstructive in 
policy." 

In the reasonable stonemasons' union, and in Chicago, where union ab- 
surdities were abolished by the lockout of 1900, the agreement with the 
employers' association makes the foreman the employer's agent, not subject 
to union rules or fines. The steward on each job is the union's agent. In 
unions generally the employer and foreman may discharge any one for any 
reason but the chairman, who must be protected from discharge, except for 
good cause, or his representing of the union might be valueless. The 
union's hiring of a walking delegate arose from discharge and blacklisting 
of grievance committees. The employer's dislike for him arose from loss 
of previous absolutism, from the unpleasantness of complaints backed by 
power, and from the overbearing attitude of many walking delegates. 



278 Getting a Living. 

way, is just as much the business of the employee, who is the 
other party to the contract. It is the employee's right and 
duty, especially in view of the little concern felt for him in this 
age by the employer, to watch the conditions of the business 
as well as he can, and to see that he gets all the money and 
advantages it can be made to yield. Apart from the moral right 
of a suitable employee to his position, the union's partnership 
in the employer's business is real and is recognized, to the 
extent that in order to keep his men he must allow them a con- 
siderable share in saying how it shall be carried on. This rela- 
tion of partnership is becoming important in the development 
of collective bargaining. 

To Resist Introduction of Machinery, by refusal to work if 
machines are admitted to displace hand workers, comes within 
the employee's right to determine on what conditions he will 
enter or continue in the wage. contract. But few workmen are 
now so short-sighted as to make an attempt so hopeless. If 
use of a machine cheapens a product considerably, the progress- 
ive employer, drawn forward by the profit to be secured, will 
find men to work it, and unionists must accept the new condi- 
tions, or be displaced from the leading shops. Most unionists 
know that society's present supply of useful things is possible 
only with machinery — that without it the present population 
could not live as civilized people, and that only, by use of more 
and better machinery can the supplies we now enjoy be in- 
creased and cheapened. In cotton manufacturing, which for a 
century has been done in England wholly with machinery, the 
Lancashire unions encourage improvements, knowing that up- 
on prompt adoption of them depends the life of the industry 
on which they live. They charge higher piece rates on old 
machines, because with them the operative cannot get so much 
done; and with their" experts at hand to bargain for them to 
advantage, they willingly lower the piece rates for new 
machines that will do more work.^ 

'The First Machines in a Trade have been generally and very natur- 
ally accepted with reluctance or resistance, ever since the breaking of the 
earliest textile machines by mobs of displaced hand workers. Of opposition 
to use of machinery, common with British unions before i860, not a trace 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 279 

The Contention Over Rate Changes Necessitated by Use of 
New Machines is sometimes thought by outsiders, perhaps, 
to be resistance to use of the machines themselves. Except in 

was found by the Royal Commission on Labor in 1894. The latest strike 
against it was a futile one by Liverpool packing case makers in 1886. They 
have since found that use of machinery has increased their employment,, 
their employers' sales being enlarged by the lower prices the machinery 
makes possible. The members of several old-fashioned trade clubs of 
Sheffield still refuse to operate machines, but other workers operate them as 
new trades. (Webb, "Industrial Democracy," 1897, page 395.) These 
statements do not harmonize with those in the late magazine articles quoted 
further on in this chapter. In England the makers of hand-made paper, 
and the makers of hand-made shoes, allowing the use of machinery to 
become a new trade, and not attempting to compete with it, raised their 
wages by raising the quality and prices of the hand-made products, and 
though few in number they are now more prosperous than ever before. 

Opposition of American Unionists to Machinery. In 1896 a court 
stopped by injunction a boycott by the coopers' union of a firm at Kansas 
City using new machines to hoop barrels. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 7.) One 
branch of cigar makers still refuse to admit machine workers to their union. 
Both the coopers and iron molders followed the same policy up to 1899. 
Stone cutters prevent the use of stone planing machines wherever they can. 
Plumbers have desired to stop the growing use of machine-made articles 
that they formerly made by hand. Plate printers, always opposed to intro- 
duction of steam presses, have so far kept them out of the government 
bureau at Washington, the largest plate printing office in the country. Flint 
glass workers proposed several years ago to manufacturers that a new 
invention then perfected be bought up and eliminated, and that price of 
lamp chimneys be raised to pay the cost. The union here had monopoly 
power, and the manufacturers also, the latter by combining behind the tariff. 
Hat making machines have been lying idle, because nobody will operate 
them, in the strongly unionized city of D anbury, Conn. Political opposition 
by unionists to the introduction of type-setting machines in the government 
printing office at Washington has recently been mentioned in newspapers. 
But in private employment the typographical union, by cooperating with 
employers in introducing type-setting machines, instead of vainly trying to 
prevent the change, raised the wages and shortened the day for its skilled 
men chosen as machine operators. The lithographers' union not long ago 
ceased opposing the use of aluminum plates. Full information concerning 
the policies of American unions is given in the Industrial Commission's 
Report, 1900-1902. See also issues of World's Work and Atlantic Monthly 
for the latter part of 1902. 

The Most Intelligent Union, the International Typographical, despite 
Its good record in admitting machines, still refuses to permit one office to 
use .type set, or stereotype matrices made, In another office. No doubt the 
reason for this rule's survival is that to few employers has it been a matter 



28o Getting a Living. 

such cases as those mentioned in the note below, the question 
is not whether the new machine shall be used, but on what 
terms for the workers. In England, from rapid introduction 
of new machines, the shoe industry has endured much turmoil 
in recent years, mainly because employers have hired many 
boys, and have insisted on time work, fearing that earnings by 
piece work would be too high on the fast machines. This 
industry, in large factories, is a new one in England, and 
peaceful bargaining fair to both sides, like that of the old 
established cotton industry, has been above the moral capacity 
of those concerned. The factory owner has wanted all the 
income except wages for bare subsistence, and the operatives 
have wanted all except enough to cover bare interest.^ 

Such Discord is a Blight on Industry, threatening both 
sides with ruin. Employers and workmen thus moved by un- 
reasoning selfishness are like barbarous tribes fighting for mas- 
tery. In this democratic age, mastery by either side in the wage 
contract destroys the efficiency of the other side. The zeal nec- 
essary for success requires bargaining equality. Wherever a 
union of skilled men, to retain or make work for themselves, 
require a machine to be operated at less than full capacity, or 
by skilled men where cheap laborers would answer as well, 
or at wages raised so high as to neutralize the machine's ad- 
vantages — they are levying a monopoly tax on the employer 
and on society, and are forcing a sale of their labor where it is 
not wanted. All these offenses, on a large scale, have been 
repeatedly charged of late against some powerful British 
unions, and have been indulged in to some extent by strong 
unions in America. For work with new machines it is right to 
put wages as high as natural market conditions will permit, 

of consequence. On the same principle, a newspaper's writers might object 
to its use of the mass of matter written once but used the same day in many 
cities, or freight handlers might require the moving of goods from one car 
to another instead of the mere switching of the car itself. So far as the 
rule has made work for printers, that work was a social waste, increasing 
cost, and lessening the total of goods, wages, and employment. In 1894, at 
Newark, N. J., an injunction saved a newspaper from imminent ruin by a 
trades council boycott against use of plate matter, without which thousands 
of small papers would not exist, or would be smaller in size and circulation. 
^Webb, 398. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 281 

and it is right also to object to a speed so rapid as to endanger 
the operative's health ; but it is utterly indefensible, and gen- 
erally futile as well, for the union to attempt to prescribe by 
whom the new machines shall be operated. Yet in partial 
excuse of the injustice in unionism to-day, it must be said that 
New England manufacturers as a class sinned grievously in 
the earlier days when unionism was weak, by speeding new 
machines remorselessly, by unfair methods of piece work and 
of pace setting, and by wholesale blacklisting for unionism's 
suppression.^ 

Monopoly of a Trade. The idea of rightfully possessing 
a monopoly of a trade, an idea that is strong in some skilled 
workers of Great Britain, has descended from the time of the 
monopoly guilds. It is felt that persons who have not served an 
apprenticeship are ''illegal men," although, with new machines, 
their work may be nearly as good as that of skilled men at 
double their pay. The cost of a trade in years of poorly paid 
apprenticeship, like the cost of a physician's education, is 
reason for contending for liberal charges,^ and for looking 
with disfavor on attempts by others to do the skilled work, 
but not for trying to force skilled work on people who would 
rather buy the unskilled. It may be well to have laws for pre- 
venting quacks from practicing medicine, because such prac- 
ticing endangers life, and because the public cannot at once 
distinguish real medical skill from spurious. But in modern 
times, as to nearly all services and commodities, people are best 
served, at lowest cost, and character is best developed, both in 

^Brooks, "The Social Unrest," 35. 

^Labor and Value. But only by limiting supply of the service does this 
cost of education enable men to collect the high charges. Willingness to pay 
Is influenced by prevailing opinion of what is proper, which opinion the 
interested parties, especially a united body of professional men of social 
standing, may mold to a considerable extent in their own favor. But after 
all, the high charges, and the opinion of what Is proper, rest on people's 
demand for the service, and on the lack, among men willing to take less, or 
m_en unable to go idle rather than cut a price, of the talent required to ren- 
der it. Social notions of what is proper, though powerful in the realm of 
fads, set prices In a very small part of the world's business. The amount of 
labor fixes charges in such cases as that of work done to order without a 
previously set price; but here no more such work will be ordered if buyers 
consider it not worth its cost. (Page 62.) 



282 Getting a Living. 

buyer and in seller, by allowing each to buy what he wants, of 
quality good or bad. He is or ought to be the best judge who 
does the paying. Th^ best helping by the public in the matter 
is to give him the intelligence to take care of himself. He can- 
not always be watched, to be kept from harm. Society is natur- 
ally and properly glad when dear things become cheap — when 
difficult work becomes so easy that anybody can do it. What 
greater blessing could come than that the whole class of 
doctors and apothecaries should lose their jobs, because no 
longer needed ? The case is the same with machinists, and with 
the many other groups of workers that get high pay because 
their capacity is scarce, while society is in straits and must 
have their services. Workers among these, whose monopoly 
society is released from by progress, will still have plenty to do. 
With all that has been achieved by invention to save labor, and 
to utilize the unskilled, whose need as well as their cheapness 
gives them the best right to preference in any positions they 
can fill, there is still enough necessity for work to keep life a 
struggle. New wants and new industries have appeared faster 
than machinery has released men from old ones, raising wages 
steadily during the last sixty years. Moreover, in tenaciously 
guarding a skilled trade, special privileges denied to others are 
assumed by the many unionists w^ho, when idle by reason of a 
strike or of depression, take work in the occupations of the 
unskilled. With the unionist's general capacity, his acceptance 
of the unskilled man's low pay may be as much a cutting of 
rates as the latter's doing of skilled work at the best rate his 
capacity will bring.^ 

^Did Unionism Put British Industry Behind? The following is an ex- 
cerpt from a widely copied article written in 1900 by the London corre- 
spondent of the New York Sun: "Even now the chief cause of American 
success is not recognized except in the engineers' trades, and there British 
manufacturers are unable to cope with it. The fatal handicap of the British 
employer is the arbitrary restriction of the trade unions, which, aside from 
hours of labor, limit to an absurd extent the amount of work which men and 
machines shall do. The effect is to make labor, when measured by actual 
accomplishment, instead of by daily wages, far more expensive in England 
than anywhere else in the world. It will be a long time before British 
workmen realize the suicidal nature of their policy, English firms cannot 
deliver goods within a reasonable time, and at prices within twent>' per 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions, 283 

To be Regretted Rather Than Censured, however, must be 
predicated of the short-sightedness and injustice described in 
the notes below. It may be assumed that these unions meant 

cent of American quotations. America's superior natural advantages ac- 
count for only perhaps ten per cent of the British handicap." 

Can These Charges be True? It must be a one-sided view of British 
unionism that Benjamin Taylor gives in the North American Revieiv of 
August, 1901. If other nations were anything like equally capable, the pre- 
eminence of British exportation of manufactures would have passed away 
long ago if British workmen in general wasted time like those Mr. Taylor 
mentions. He tells, among many similar cases, of a Swiss laborer just 
arrived who made fifty cartridge boxes in a day where unionists had pre- 
viously limited themselves to eight ; of unions destroying all advantage in 
new machinery by insisting that the simplest machines be operated, one at 
a time, by highly paid union men. Instead of by cheap laborers who turn out 
more work with them and as good in quality; of glass industries that were 
taken away from England by Germans and Belgians whose employees did 
not idle openly. A similar statement of ruinous waste of capacij:y of men 
and machines in England is given by F. A. Vanderlip in Scribner's Maga- 
zine for March, 1902. He says that at a meeting of leading business men 
he attended in England all agreed that the effect of unionism there is to lead 
men to do the least possible amount of work, and to oppose introduction of 
new machinery. Also, an article by Frederick Emory, in Popular Science 
Monthly for April, 1902, gives accounts of incredible waste of time by 
British unionists. Machinists opposing new machines fight their own trade. 

Bad Customs Have Grown Up. In an article in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury for January, 1902, J. G. Hutchinson, a British workingman, admits that 
there is a "go-easy" policy in some unions, and that there is considerable 
truth in the charge that an unwritten law of unions fosters giving less in 
work than the employer might reasonably expect to receive. He says em- 
ployers have been at fault in permitting such customs to arise; that they 
should buy the best machinery, put it at first in the hands of loyal men, of 
whom there are many in the unions, to determine its proper output (not to 
try to make it a failure), and then by discretion in management get its full 
product afterward. Stronger evidence of bad customs is given in Engineer- 
ing Magazine^ Aug. 1902, by T. Good, an English union workman of varied 
experience. He says: ''That this go-easy policy is in extensive operation in 
many industries, that it has a demoralizing influence upon workmen, and 
that it materially affects the larger problem of foreign competition, I freely 
admit." The main cause, he says, lies in the wide separation of employer 
and men, affairs being left to foremen who are so ruled by favoritism, and 
by various kinds of bribes from workmen, that in some shops nine-tenths of 
the promotions do not go to the fittest. To induce men to rise above the 
dead line of mediocrity there is also needed, he says, care to insure that each 
is paid according to the amount of work he does. (Page 265.) John F. 
Fraser, an apparently capable judge who visited America and investigated, 



284 Getting a Living. 

well. Realizing that eternal vigilance and struggle are the 
price of a union's liberty and progress, they made the mistake 
of trying to save themselves by selfishly beating back society's 
forward reach for more abundant supplies (thus exploiting 

says the British workman is superior to the American (he knows his trade 
better), but that the American employer, making a business for himself, 
is greatly superior to the British employer, who depends on the reputation 
made by his grandfather. {Nineteenth Century, March, 1903.) George 
Lynch, one of the Mosely party, says the American employer is far more ac- 
cessible to his men, rewarding, not resenting, suggestions. {Outlook, Jan. 10.) 

The Fallacies Involved. Perhaps it is the wide separation of Ameri- 
can workingmen from the old monopoly guild system which enables the 
great majority of them to accept so willingly the fact that progress for all, 
in high wages and in cheap goods, consists in getting the largest product, 
with the least labor that will answer. Most consumers get few enough 
goods at best. Trying to avoid doing too much may arise also from experi- 
ence with efforts by employers to take advantage of men, as well as from the 
mischievous fallacy that full work by one takes employment away from 
another (page 270). Inflow of better and cheaper American goods under 
British free trade, and a change by British employers from their usual con- 
servatism to the activity required by present exigencies, are fast bringing 
British workmen to sound ideas. This is noticeable in the workmen's articles 
referred to above, in the articles by British employers and workmen in the 
Engineering Magazine for January, 1901, and especially in the teachable 
attitude of the two dozen British unionists brought over by Alfred Mosely 
in 1902 to study American methods. {World's Work and Outlook, Dec. 
1902, Jan. 1903.) In view of the fact that many British industries still hold 
their lead, with present totals of British exports that have been equalled but 
once before, it seems that the above accounts of extremes in unionism must 
apply to but a small portion of British industry. By Clement Edwards, in 
the Contemporary Revietv for January, 1902, all the charges are flatly 
denied; and in the Mosely articles just referred to it is shown that the ac- 
counts of American bricklayers doing in England twice and three times the 
usual stint there do not compare work of the same grade of difficulty. 
British workmen and subcontractors in 1901 on the Westinghouse plant in 
Manchester — under high American wages, and under resourceful American 
employers that planned well and tolerated no quibbling — soon reached the 
American speed of work and were well contented with it. Moreover, there 
is another side to the question of rushing work. (See Chapter XVI.) 

American Steel Workers and Labor Saving Devices. In connection 
v^^ith the strike in 1901 of the steel workers in the Pittsburgh district, it was 
said that the non-union mills had taken the lead, by adopting labor-saving 
devices forbidden by the union in mills it controlled. "A few years ago the 
Amalgamated Association withdrew its objection to labor-saving devices, 
but it was too late. The organization mills had been left behind in the 
march of improvement when the arbitrary practices were in vogue." 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 285 

the consumers charged higher prices and the unskilled shut out 
from employment), instead of by turning the skill of their men 
to serve society in cheerful cooperation toward improvement. 
Their power had probably become too great, and they gave 
way, perhaps, to the temptation to be despotic. But retribu- 
tion came to the offenders, and deliverance to those offended 
against. The great strike in 1897 by the powerful union of 
British machinists, for an eight-hour day, was a failure, and 
in settlement the employers exacted the right to introduce 
machines at will, to say by whom they should be run and to 
pass on*the adequacy of their output, and otherwise to follow 
the American practice of getting trade and increasing employ- 
ment by producing at lowest possible cost per item of product.^ 
In This Costly Way Society's Progress Has Come. The 
final results of all this trouble will doubtless be the clearing 
away of unsound ideas from British unionism, and the plac- 
ing of British industry on a safer basis — on that basis of full 
freedom to progress, which has placed American industry 
first. During the last several years, it is said, the head officials 

^Losses by the British Engineers' Strike of 1897. Perhaps in this 
case the union reached the impassable barrier of natural law. Perhaps, 
under the many restrictions set, the men's labor was not worth to the em- 
ployers the pay demanded. British manufacturers may have been unable to 
meet the union's terms and still earn profits worth their trouble and risk, 
from world market prices fixed by manufacturers paying lower wages and 
working more hours in Germany, or using cheaper raw materials in Amer- 
ica. The union made deep inroads upon its funds, and weakened its hold 
upon the favor of the people, who felt that British industry was already in 
a serious struggle with more favorably situated foreign competition. By the 
strike the employers, being delayed with orders previously taken at low 
prices, were unable to reap their large share of the harvest of profitable 
business that ripened in 1898 and the three years following; while previous 
buyers of British machinery were pleased with the improved styles and 
quick delivery of new purchases of American machinery, which will here- 
after displace the British product to a large extent in many lands. The 
near results of the strike were therefore calamitous for all concerned. 

How American Unionism is Learning. ''Given a good deal more of 
stern, sound, knowing criticism, and I believe we shall escape the killing 
effects on industry charged to trade unionism in England. . . . Our labor has 
its violence, and its passions, and its absurdities; but it can learn. It has 
learned. I have heard the big leaders talk well about the evils of trade 
unionism over there, and there is a sentiment well spread in the ranks that 
real dangers exist, which have always hurt business and reacted upon 



286 Getting a Living. 

of the Amalgamated Engineers have been warning their local 

unions against limitation of output. Moreover, without the 
strike America would sooner or later have gained a foothold 
in Britain's foreign markets. The engineers' union found that 
exercise of monopoly power in this age is dangerous to its 
possessors, as well as injurious to those exploited; and that 
to hold its position among progressive people a union must do 
what it claims to do — make its offering of labor worth more 
to the employer, and by his own estimate, than the labor offered 
by others. Despite the success of some trusts, people^ will not 
now submit long to a private tax that can individually be 
avoided. They will buy the non-unionist's labor if it suits them 
best. Even the wasteful demarcation disputes^ of British unions 
are probably necessary stepping stones to higher things. 

labor." (Ralph M. Easley, McClure's Magazine, Oct. 1902.) It is because 
the truth itself is essential to the progress all classes desire, as indicated at 
the beginning of the above quotation, that the author of this book, so far as 
by his best efforts the truth is found, cries aloud and spares not, either 
worker or employer whose claims are untenable. 

^Which Trade Shall Take the Work? These are disputes over the 
line where the work of one trade ends, and that of another trade begins. 
In shipbuilding the question has been over which pipes should be set by 
plumbers, and which by machinists. It arises in the many cases, in various 
industries, in which something new is introduced, such as terra cotta trim- 
mings on brick buildings, or such as a machine doing an entirely new kind 
of work. The tenacity of British unionists in these matters does not spring 
from greed, but from loyalty to the union, and especially from the old guild 
notions of a trade's vested rights. There have been cases in which a 
demarcation strike affecting a few men has brought months of idleness to 
the great shipbuilding industry of the Tyne. 

The Employer to Decide. Webb's answer to the question here is for the 
different unions concerned to agree on a price for each new kind of work, 
and then let the employer assign it to the trade he chooses. If his selection 
is forced in favor of a trade having the higher rate, according to the union 
policy of getting all in reach for the working class, there is pretty sure to be 
exploitation of him or his customers by union monopoly. The same seems 
to be true if for new work, not specially difficult, a rate is made higher than 
that of the unionists by whom the work is done; though for them to use the 
opportunity and raise their regular rate would be proper. Everywhere a 
union necessarily objects to having men from other departments of the shop 
come into its department and do its work, since they are to it non-unionists, 
though members of unions of their own. There is not much trouble here 
with customary work, since a process naturally settles to those doing it 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 287 

Much of the progress of humanity has come from things 
largely evil, such as wars, conquests, and persecutions, as the 
wisdom of an individual comes from costly mistakes. Unions 
of workingmen, long hindered and fought instead of lielped 
by the educated classes, are as excusable for permitting evils 
as are great churches and governments. As set forth in the 

best; and no occasion for offense except when in emergency one department 
lacks men. After due effort and waiting to secure men of the proper t;^d^, 
its union would probably permit others to do the work at its regular rate, 
especially if they were unionists too, and had a rate of their own fully as 
high. But with any work not already found by experience to be done best 
by one particular trade, the party to determine which trade should have it 
is of course the employer, the buyer of the service, who does the paying, and 
who alone has any right to pass on the question as to which trade renders 
the best value for the cost. A bicycle mender declines to repair a watch, 
not because it would be dishonorable for him thus to take work from another 
trade, but because the watch repairer will be found by the owner to be far 
more suitable for the job. The laws of some states forbidding all but 
licensed men to do plumbing are justified by the connection of such work 
w^ith the public health, but in having such laws passed plumbers are chiefly 
moved no doubt by the monopoly motive of the guilds. Not a few similar 
laws have been set aside in America as unconstitutional, the claim as to 
public good being held to be but a pretext. Demarcation or jurisdiction 
strikes occur somewhat frequently in America in the building trades, and 
one of the most serious dangers of American unionism just now is the fight- 
ing between rival unions in the same trade, or for control of certain trade 
branches; but, as Levasseur points out, the great American corporations, as 
a rule, are so little under the power of unions that they would not tolerate 
■wasteful contentions over trivial matters. The machinists' union has lost a 
number of railroad shops for what the companies deemed unreasonable 
objection to piece work. It was loss of shops, for its refusal to permit any 
piece work, that led the British machinists' union in 1893 to permit it on 
duplicate parts. 

Some Union Excesses. Only in the monopolistic building trades could 
occur such things as the occasional tearing down and rebuilding of a small 
scab-made foundation because the other trades refuse to work on the job. 
In a late case in New York masons and electricians disputing as to which 
trade should put holes through walls were both paid full wages, though 
idle, while the central body decided the matter. In disputes between steam 
fitters and plumbers in Chicago before 1901, there were cases in which work 
was done and paid for twice, Involving a delay of weeks. In New York 
9,000 carpenters were out for nearly two months in 1903 on no grievance, 
but only because one union, the Brotherhood, tried and failed to crush out the 
other, the Amalgamated. For the time, building was paralyzed for all 
trades. 



288 Getting a Living. 

preceding chapters, unionism has to its credit a long array of 
achievements that proved as beneficial to society as to its own 
adherents. 

Do Trade Unions Smother Ability and Encourage Medi- 
ocrity? That their influence tends to this deplorable result, 
believed to be true by many intelligent people, has doubtless 
some basis in fact. Besides the unionist objection to working 
too fast, explained before, there has undoubtedly been a ten- 
dency among the less capable workers to make up for their 
mediocrity with rabid unionism, and class feeling, and to 
regard the superior workers, especially when these try to save 
money and get ahead, with suspicion of a disposition to take 
the side of the employer, and of an intention to rise to his posi- 
tion without retaining sympathy for those left below. An in- 
fluence of this envious feeling, which exists with the mediocre 
in perhaps every class not -high, but is stronger among work- 
ingmen, because the union exists mainly for those who have 
no hope of rising, is to confirm the poor workers in their inefli- 
ciency, and to check the advance of those of the capable who 
are not of decided character. 

A Stronger Force for Leveling Up. But so far as there is 
here a leveling down, it is greatly overbalanced by a stronger 
force in unionism for leveling up. The latter force is the neces- 
sity, under high wages for union men, of doing better work 
than non-unionists that might be hired; of really earning the 
high wages to prevent employers paying them from failing, 
or from so raising prices, where that is possible, as to check 
consumption and diminish employment. Where one capable 
man is kept by loyalty to the union from making the most of 
himself, there are probably five who by the necessity of earning 
their union wages are constrained to attain a degree of skill 
they would not otherwise have sought. 

Does Not Unionism Lead to Selection of the Fittest? 
High union wages, therefore, when the work required to earn 
them rises above mediocre capacity, force the inefiicient into 
non-union shops, or into small towns without unions, and win- 
now steadily employed unionists down to a group of picked 
men. This just placing of men where they belong is undoubt- 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 289 

edly a net result of unionism in all except perhaps the few 
cases in England where a small old union has a secure monop- 
oly under employers who can exist without progress. Even in 
the unwholesome monopoly power of unions in the Chicago 
building trades, as they have shortened the day and raised 
wages the men have had to work harder and harder.^ In prac- 
tically all conditions in America, unionists must soon earn 
their high wages or lose their employment to non-unionists 
and to smaller towns. Hence, whatever may be said by union- 
ists in censure of scabbing, and of some workmen's indifference 
to unionism, there is a safeguard to society in the usual inabil- 
ity of a union to organize its trade with any approach to the 
monopoly completeness that is unionism's ideal. ^ 

The Union Rate is a Minimum, Not a Maximum. Oppo- 
nents of unionism often assume the latter as an evidence of 
leveling down. Under piece work this question does not arise, 
each man earning all he can. Under time work the one rate 
generally prevails, and is usually fair to the fastest man where 
high efficiency is required to hold a position. The work is easy 
to him, while with the slowest man passing as competent it 
requires a continuous strain ; and for each the one rate is 

^Spahr, "America's Working People," 178. 

In the dull times of 1895 the bricklayers' union of Baltimore, in order to 
get any work, reduced its rate of $4 for eight hours to $3.60 for eight hours, 
and then to $3 for nine hours, with eight on Saturday — the rate generally 
paid to non-union men. The next year the carpenters were driven to a 
similar expedient. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 7, page 727.) 

^The Danger in Excessive Power of Trade Unions is so great that 
another note concerning it is permissible. Mr. Henry White, the able sec- 
retary of the garment makers' union, wrote in 1901 as follows: "As much 
importance as I attach to the labor movement, I am free to say that I would 
fear, in its present status, its ascendency over society. Organizations feed 
upon power, for which they have an insatiable appetite." (J. P. Peters, 
"Labor and Capital," 88.) This view is only too well justified by the com- 
mon tyranny of unions where they have the power. In connection with 
unionism's monopoly methods in apprenticeship and other matters, the judi- 
cially careful author of the Industrial Commission's Report, Vol. XVII., 
made this statement: "It is probable that the great body of the rank and 
file, and many of the leaders, would take any action which should seem 
likely to further their own interests." However, this is no more than capi- 
talists do. The good result of excess in unscrupulous action by either class 
is that it settles law and custom for its complete prevention in the future. 
19 



290 Getting a Living. 

higher than he could hope to obtain by any effort without a 
union. The fastest man's disadvantage in having the rate 
raised less for him by the union than for the slowest, is bal- 
anced by the former's being hired first and laid off last, and by 
his being assigned (when he is exceptional for quality as well 
as for speed) to those parts of the work which he prefers. The 
leveling here involved is no more perhaps than is necessary 
under time work in any case, or than prevails in trades not 
unionized. Where unions are unknown a group of men paid 
the same rate per day vary necessarily in efficiency within a 
considerable range, exact grading of pay to time work done 
being impracticable; and in any kind of action in association, 
so important in modern society, there is in the advantage to be 
secured a necessary leveling that falls short of strict justice for 
the member contributing most, and passes it for the member 
contributing least. But under the one union rate, in order to 
retain or properly remunerate an exceptionally capable man, 
the employer in many cases pays him a rate higher.^ If given 

'Time Wages Varying According to Efficiency. But usually the em- 
ployer gives with the extra wages some slight promotion in position or in 
authority, or assigns the man to work of special difficulty. His extra pay is 
then based on a reason to which no one can object. For his work, on time 
wages, to differ from that of the others in quantity only might seem to keep 
their inferiority unpleasantly prominent — their lack either in natural capac- 
ity or in willingness to put forth effort. Tact in employer or foreman is 
required here by due consideration for men's feelings. Though not con- 
trary to union rule, the practice of giving higher pay for more work has 
probably been less common than is required for the good of all parties con- 
cerned. That it has been a somewhat delicate matter, liable to cause jeal- 
ousy, is indicated by a workingman's counsel that employers should openly 
pay specially good men higher v/ages, and by such reward develop the 
varying powers of all. {Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1902.) Mr. Vanderlip, 
in Scribner's for March, 1902, dwells on the blighting effect to British indus- 
try of a union rule of but one rate for all men. By paying a higher rate to 
all men on a certain class of work, and retaining none who cannot earn it, 
jealousy is avoided. This practice is not uncommon. In New York the 
Herald, Tribune, and Journal each pays printers $30 a week, while the 
union scale is only $27. If a general practice were established of paying 
differing time wages above the union minimum, according to clear differ- 
ences in the men's average output, greater justice would be secured to 
employees, but not to the employer's advantage except so far as extra pay, 
drawing out fast men's capacity, secured better use of machinery. In this 
a measurement of output by piece work or by premium plans (page 100) 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 291 

for his better work, and not to win him away from his union- 
ism, this extra pay is in harmony with the union rule not to 
lower the rate by giving work of larger than the intended 
value. And in the union scale, for every little rise in position 
of the worker an addition is made to the minimum or stand- 
ard rate. The union is not backward in charging all it can. 
The scale generally reads "not less than" the rate stated, the 
especial object of this language being to avoid lowering the 
wages of some who may already be receiving a rate higher.^ 
The union leaves abundant opportunity for the -able man to 
rise. While working among other men at the same pay, if he 
does not secure an increase he can (besides getting the finer 
and more varied work to do, and besides being retained 
through dull times) prepare himself for promotion to a place 
as assistant foreman, or can go to a larger city, where his 
higher skill will bring higher pay. Unionists look with frater- 
nal favor on the advancement of .a comrade into the higher 
walks of life, especially when he remains a friend of the work- 
ing class, like the late Congressman Amos J. Cummings, who 
continued through life to keep in force his card as a member of 
the printers' union. ^ As to any workman's efforts to rise, typ- 

is safer to the employer than a foreman's necessarily loose estimate as 
to whether differences of individual averages are being maintained. 

^The few small American unions, such as that of the German printers 
in some of its locals, which forbid receiving more than the prescribed rate, 
divide their members into first and second grades at differing rates of pay. 
The position of the German printers is exceptional. The fact that their 
industry is declining binds them together into a close monopolistic body, 
which cares for members with large benefits, and in some cases divides up 
work by allowing a man but five days a week. The stone cutters frown 
on a member receiving more than the regular rate, their claim being that 
he is then accepting blood money as a pace setter. In unions generally the 
regular rate is so high that very few get more. During the busy year 1902 
a third of New York stereotj^pers received premium pay, but such pay, it 
was found by examination of pay rolls in many cities, is received by perhaps 
not over one per cent of men in building trades. (Outlook, March 21, 28, 
and May 31, 1903.) In 1893 Chicago lathers had one class at $4 a day and 
another at $3.50 — reduced to $3 and $2.50 Dec. i of that year. A rule of 
New York plasterers has been not to allow any member to receive more than 
the one rate. Often bricklayers too forbid extra pay, fearing pace setting. 

^One source of weakness to American unions is the constant loss of the 
abler officials by their rise to political and other positions, and by their 



292 Getting a Living. 

ical unionists are suspicious only where they have reason to 
beheve he will selfishly help himself at the expense of union- 
ism. Whatever its faults, unionism is free from individual 
selfishness. In its tendency to begrudge the employer his high 
profits, and to prevent any one from absorbing too large a 
share of the employment offered, the purpose in view is the 
welfare of wage workers as a class. It is in the other direction 
from personal selfishness that unionism errs, cultivating class 
feeling in some fields where individual effort would be better 
for the class as well as for the individual himself.^ 

becoming small employers or entering professions. President Mitchell, of the 
United Mine Workers, has rested content with his salary of $1,500 (lately 
raised), that he may do the great work that lies before him for unionism, 
instead of taking other positions his ability would command at treble that 
sum. He is probably held to his post by the knowledge that there is a 
temptation to offer him good positions in order to bribe him away from 
unionism. There would probably be no better way of overcoming the 
United Mine Workers. 

^The Socialistic Feeling Against Self -Advancement. So far as union- 
ists really do not encourage the ambitious worker, who is the salt of a coun- 
try's industrial population, their fault is probably due mainly to a hope of 
impossible future good for all together in some degree of socialism, brought 
about through united demand of the working class, instead of good secured 
chiefly by advancement of each individual for himself. This explains 
a feeling against self-advancement as disloyalty to the class. The aggre- 
gate influence of unsound ideas in unionism to encourage slow work, and to 
stifle personal ambition, is perhaps its chief weakness. Undoubtedly, on 
the less intelligent, such an influence does proceed from this socialistic hope, 
with Its blindness to the differing values of men's labor, and also from the 
idea that there is only a fixed amount of work to be done. The necessity 
of avoiding extremes applies to unionism as to all else. Not enough 
unionism, in large industry, leaves each worker helpless before the em- 
ployer. Too much unionism coddles the individual as socialism would do, 
reducing his ability to help either himself or his class, while exploiting con- 
sumers and outside workers for his benefit. Fortunately, more knowledge 
and experience among unionists, and especially reasonable recognition of 
unionism by employers, instead of relentless opposition, will prevent it from 
sacrificing all else for fighting power. It will then level up the lower as 
at present, and will not need to cling so closely to the abler. 

When One Rises Does He Push Back Others? It is surprising how 
one-sided are the views of many of those inclined toward socialism, in- 
cluding some with acute minds. Writers persist in saying that the individ- 
ual rising does so by pushing back his fellows (W. D. P. Bliss in "Labor 
and Capital," Putnam, 1902; J. A. Hobson, 'The Social Problem," 138), 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 293 

Unionism and Employment for Old Men. The efficiency 
required to earn at time rates the high wages set by unions, 
shuts out elderly men from employment. By the rules of 
bricklayers' unions (similar to the German printers' rule pre- 
viously mentioned), the men at work on a job may permit a 
person partially incapacitated, by age or infirmity, to work for 

while the fact is that by rising he benefits them most effectively — leaving for 
them his position, attaining influence he can exert for them, and producing 
more value with which to employ them and all others by spending in 
consumption or by saving as capital. It would be an insult to his honesty 
and to their intelligence to assume that he rises by cheating them. Other- 
wise he harms no one except the worker or dealer above him whose position 
or custom he takes, and these he really benefits eventually, since as he gives 
better values they are where they do not belong, and where they can 
remain only by the exploitation of keeping these better values away. In 
trying to hold a job one ought not to have, there is no satisfaction; and an 
active conscience will not let a merchant, whatever his need, charge 
ignorant buyers more than the regular price of competitors, while there 
is the same deterrent in fear of being found out. Fortunately, a practice 
of rendering value, either in quantity or quality, below the limit set by 
proper regard for the worker's health, the society of to-day as consumers 
will not permit very long. It is now realized that strength and talent are 
best conserved by wise use, not by nursing. In an age when society was 
far less virile it yet proved equal to this test, and when the forces making 
for exploitation by unionism were much stronger than at present. The 
mediaeval guilds, though supported by the ruling landholders, who were 
glad to have their laborers shut out of the trades and of the towns, broke 
down because they tried to check improvement and cheapening of goods. 
(Hadley, "Economics," 369.) To every man according to people's desire 
for what he offers, is the essential principle of progress. A dead weight 
on it, aside from the moral discipline of giving, is the necessary evil of 
rendering in charity and helpfulness according to need. 

The Christian Duty to Love One Another vs^as the text of a preacher 
who on last Labor Day protested against as unchristian — as inciting each 
to get the better of his neighbor — the common practice of fanning the 
ambition of boys by telling them to rise by doing better work than others 
around them. It is true that a considerate or conscientious worker, though 
doing his best to improve, does not try to get another's position unless 
he knows that the latter, for unfitness or for other reason, is soon to 
lose it anyhow ; and then he does not suggest the change, but asks for the 
vacancy when it is made by forces wholly apart from him. Usually he 
knows too little of the employer's intentions to consider whether a future 
vacancy comes from discharge of men or from additions to the force. With 
what the employer does his rising in fitness will have nothing to do, unless 
on- the higher level there would be no others to be hired. Loving one's fel- 
lows, and keeping them in their jobs, by purposely remaining below them in 



294 Getting a Living. 

less than the full rate, like printers' two-thirders — young men 
who have not fully learned the trade, named from the propor- 
tion they receive of the full piece rate. But as a rule with 
unions, there is no such provision for the aged, since in most 
shops they would not be desired by the employer, and since 
allowing exceptions may undermine the rate. Displacement 
of elderly men, though often serious for them, is perhaps not 
a disadvantage to society. Besides their chance to save money 
while under high union wages, and to prepare for some other 
work to follow after leaving the trade, their experience is then 
useful in the shops of small towns having no unions, and their 
displacement leaves the rapid, skilled work to men in their 
prime, giving society the best and cheapest goods, and the most 
rapid progress in production. Of course, in union towns, old 
unionists would never think of weakening the union by work- 
ing in scab shops ; but in many towns work by them in some^ 

fitness, would soon bring one to need of help for himself in an improving 
community; and if adopted as a policy by many would soon — by lessening 
employment, patronage, and supply of goods — bring all to the fellow feeling 
of poverty. The truth is that for superior men, taken from every grade of 
workers, there is unlimited need, in new work which, without them, it w^ould 
not pay the employer to have done at all, and which, if done well, adds 
vastly to the employment and to the supplies of all. Such new work is 
ready for the lowest grade of unemployed incompetents whose efficiency is 
raised, and not, as Mr. Hobson claims, by displacement of others, unless the 
latter are where they do not belong and hence could do better in other work, 
perhaps in the new work considered. The amount of goods and of work 
desired is unlimited, not fixed; but to make one's labor worth a living wage 
and to get such a wage, one must learn or be taught to do what is wanted. 
The latter truth no reform can ever change. Yet society should do much 
more, by wise education, tenement laws, etc., to awaken desire and purpose 
in the poor, and to protect them. (Chapter XIX.) Not the least effort 
honestly made by the weakest need fail, in bettering both character and 
condition, for self and for society. The above exposition shows how un- 
sound is Mr. Hobson's claim that successful effort for one's self "commonly 
involves ruthless trampling down of weak competitors," and that teaching 
such effort "is the most pernicious policy which has ever been dignified with 
the false title of morality." 

^In Brooklyn the shop work and small outside job work are done mainly 
by old carpenters, whom the union permits to work at $3 a day, the full 
rate being $3.60. The admirable agreement of the molder's union with 
Philadelphia employers leaves them free to agree on wages with young men 
of limited experience, the old or infirm, and the partially skilled. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 295 

kinds of small shops at low wages would not be considered 
scabbing. It is a tax on society, raising price and retarding 
progress, to hold back employment from those who are chosen 
because they render best values. For the less capable, whether 
by reason of age or otherwise, there is plenty of easier and 
commoner work, down to the lowest grades. In such work 
only can the latter serve society by turning out a product 
worth its wage cost. The charity of keeping a man in a posi- 
tion after he has become unsuitable is not hidden, and is about 
the same as other charity in its injury to character. Sound 
self-respect would lead an aged man to prefer the slower work 
and lower pay in which he rendered full value. The feeling 
of earning one's way may postpone far into the future the time 
of necessary retirement.^ 

'Have the Aged a Claim on the Employer? It is a mistake to feel 
that the aged have a claim on those employers to whom high union wages 
leave in average cases only necessary profit. Their payment of such wages 
leaves no kind of a pecuniary claim unsettled. An additional claim above 
wages is recognized and met, with servants and others, in communities 
where low money wages are supplemented with use of wood, pasture, and 
help in need. But it is in these communities that wage workers are thought 
of as faring worst. Wages there are near the subsistence line, and life is 
hard and coarse, as it was with feudalism and slavery, under which the 
ruling class made some sort of provision for the old age of the workers. The 
common complaint nowadays of fast work, and of the early aging of men, 
should probably be laid mainly against unionism. By raising wages very 
high it forces employers to require fast work, in order to keep cost of prod- 
uct below its selling price; and as keeping wages at the highest point takes 
all that marginal profits can bear, nothing is left to be paid later in the form 
of care for the disabled and the aged. The old system of low present 
wages, with guaranteed support, would be preferred by many employers. 
Under it workers are dependent and easily controlled. Steps toward a re- 
turn to the old system are taken in the case of pensions and welfare institu- 
tions. Unionists are wise in choosing to take in wages now all that is 
coming to them. Only thus can they become independent, self-directed men. 
Responsibility for their own support in old age they are glad to take for the 
sake of liberty. Though a socialistic society guaranteeing support desired 
to allow each man liberty, and to pay him his full current product, it would 
be prevented from doing either by the necessity of keeping product large 
enough, and need small enough, for carrying out its promises. By no device 
will people ever get benefits in the future without paying for them in the 
present. Many fraternities that made great promises for the future in 
assessment life insurance, and offered great attractions for the present in 
low dues, have in due time come to grief. 



296 Getting a Living. 

Why is Unionism Not a Guarantee of Capability or Char- 
acter? Because the effectiveness of the union depends upon 
its getting as members, as far as practicable, all the men in the 
trade, so that, for lack of non-unionists to hire, employers may 
be compelled to accept the union's terms. By publication of 
an applicant's name in the union's national organ, and by other 
inquiries, the local union seeks, for its own protection, to find 
if he has been guilty of ratting, or bears unremoved any dis- 
favor from some other local union to which he may have 
belonged; but an applicant would not usually be rejected on 
account of his personal character unless its badness were of a 
nature hostile to the comradeship of unionism. The bad char- 
acters, such as drunkards, tramps, and libertines, are generally 
men who have been in the trade and the union for some time. 
Often their redeeming trait is ardent unionism, and devotion 
to its code of honor concerning fellow craftsmen. As to com- 
petency, most unions require an experience of three to five 
years in the trade, and all of them expect a man to be able to 
hold a position in a union shop. But as a rule the interpreta- 
tion of competency is liberal to the applicant. In small union 
shops low competency will answer. Now if unions would 
take strict responsibility as to competency and character, ad- 
mitting and retaining only those of proved desirableness, 
would there not be a change among employers from opposition 
against unionism to an attitude of friendliness? Such men 
they need above all else, and to get them they will go to the 
highest limit in wages. But there are better means for sep- 
arating the sheep from the goats. The employer and his 
foreman are the best judges of competency. They find out 
easily if a man is desirable. Few men undertake work they 
are unfitted for. The union could not take the risks of in- 
ternal discord involved in passing upon the qualifications of 
persons already members ; while if grading were left to the 
employer his interest would be to put all in a class low and 
cheap. Those knowing themselves unable to hold positions 
in union shops seldom ask to join, since to keep the pledge they 
could not work elsewhere in a union town, while any one pass- 
ably competent who was excluded might feel justified after- 
ward in opposing the union actively. 



Questionable Policies of Trade Unions. 297 

But Employers Can Make Unionism a Proof of Desirable- 
ness, and their best friend in securing- good workmen. When 
among employers there is a welcome for the union, instead of a 
desire to destroy it, good policy leads it not only to cease 
striking against non-members (page 208) but also to require 
high tests for admission. The railway brotherhoods can adhere 
to the engineers' well known policy of excluding men who drink 
(for this fault the engineers expelled 172 in one year), and of 
actively promoting temperance and reliability, because they 
know the companies will not employ the excluded men to break 
the union, but on the contrary will be won to its favor. On the 
same principles the stereotypers' union of New York city is not 
induced to admit every passable workman, so that there will be 
none to hire as non-unionists, but, giving applicants a permit to 
work, requires of them the conclusive test of first proving 
ability to hold a job in a union shop. Being formed at first on 
the proper interests of fellow workmen, this union won so 
nearly all the good men that all the employers desiring good 
work recognize it willingly, and hence all the good men are now 
drawn into it by the fact that no other employers pay good 
wages. Thus, without need of the compulsion in the power to 
strike, and in harmony, this union retains the favor both 
of the employers and of those who might have desired to be 
non-unionists.^ (But good men had to join. Outlook article, 
June 13.) 

^A Model Union this one seems to be in some respects at least. A 
member coming on dut}^- drunk is fined not less than $io (fines for injuring 
unionism with drunkenness and abusive language have long been the rule 
in good unions), and the shop chairman must report him, or he too is fined, 
to keep him impartial. Where two members while drunk damaged the 
plant, this union had the employer discharge them, furnished him two 
good men, and paid for the damage with fines collected from the two 
offenders in installments. Its president (Outlook, March 28, 1903) tells 
also of a case in which two of its men, at $27 each per week, did the work 
previously done by three non-unionists at $20 each; and of a case In which 
the carpenters' union won an employer's favor by a similar change from 
slow men at $2.25 a day to fast men at $3.50. However, it is unlikely 
that these gains are clear enough, or the union free enough from faults, 
or the employers willing enough to give up their old time autocracy, 
to enable many unions to succeed yet without a large measure of 
coercion of masters and men, backed by readiness to strike, or without 



298 Getting a Living. 

admission of all men passably competent. Some unions, such as that 
of the steam fitters in New York city, which subject applicants to a 
somewhat rigid examination, have probably so much power (having 
nearly all the workers as members and having agreements with employers) 
that men rejected cannot work at the trade in the locality. Such a degree 
of control by the union is uncommon. 

Perfection in Unionism. A union must acquire some merit first, as 
employers could not be expected to recognize it in order to reform it, nor even 
to improve it unless its merits were already considerable. The more wise and 
just its policies, the nearer it can come to attracting all the good men, the 
higher the average rate its men can earn, (which rate will also attract and 
hold), and the greater the certainty that the employer cannot find others to 
equal them, and will not desire to do so. Competition among men for posi- 
tions, cutting under the rate being no longer thought of, takes the form of 
raising the workers' quality, and unionists become a picked group, with even 
minimum conditions hard to reach. The fact that anybody can get casual 
work on the docks demoralizes London's unskilled labor as a whole. If 
higher wages had to be paid, there would be more regular work on the 
docks for an efficient group, as under unionism in Antwerp, and to get into 
that group those below it w^ould try to improve. With wage rates thus 
fixed high for each trade, and with no thought of rate cutting employers 
would each select the best men, and surplus men left out would drop into the 
lower trades better suited to them, and so on down to the lowest grades. 
(Webb, 720). Also inability to compete by cutting pay and lowering condi- 
tions (owing to complete unionizing) would lead to selection of the best em- 
ployers, methods and machinery, raising efficiency of all classes and promot- 
ing progress and ise of well-being. There would be little chance for 
employers that depend on low pay and on holding in a trade men belonging 
below it. With such reasonableness on both sides, strikes become rare, no 
picketing is needed or done and non-unionists are hardly thought of. 
Such is the rule with the unions in the British cotton and coal trades. The 
employer must take back the same workers, as no others suitable will accept 
their places, but all the employers must meet the same conditions, and the 
unions dare not injure the trade. The views in this paragraph, taken from 
Mr. Webb, seem to be sound, but need the additional discussion in Chap- 
ter XXVIII. The opposite effects of monopoly — in removing incentive to 
improve, in lowering capacity of employers and workers, and in narrowing 
the trade — result from rules by which British unions of glass and paper 
makers select the employee by rotation, and from such agreement between 
the union and employers that new concerns cannot be started. 



CHAPTER XL 
LEARNING A TRADE. 

Limitation of the Number of Apprentices— Old Customs. 

This system, a foundation stone of the mediaeval guilds, has 
been adopted and enforced, as far as practicable, by trade 
unions, in their efforts to retain the special rights of the skilled 
crafts. An effectual limitation has been maintained in Eng- 
land by small unions in trades existing at only one or a few 
cities, where the union still possesses, but little changed, the 
monopoly it had a century ago as a trade club, and which it 
and the employers had together in earlier times as a guild. 
Among the various grinders, forgers, etc., in the Sheffield 
cutlery industry, there are forty or fifty of these handicraft 
trades. They are recruited almost wholly from journeymen's 
sons, who in the days of the guilds had privileges over outside 
apprentices. The latter then gained advancement by marry- 
ing masters' daughters. The stonemason's trade also is now 
mainly recruited in England from journeymen's sons, who by 
the union rules must demand full pay as soon as they can earn 
it. Other apprentices are limited to one for each six or seven 
journeymen, and must serve from five to seven years. The 
boy is apprenticed to the journeyman mason who teaches him, 
not to the employer. In England there are still some cases of 
payment of money by a boy's father for his admission to a 
trade as an apprentice, usually in the form of a considerable 
payment to the journeyman who teaches him. Formerly such a 
payment to the employer was the rule, sometimes as much as 
iioo; and is the rule now in the guilds of Austria. In some 
cases still in America, the employer is paid one or two hun- 
dred dollars for teaching a boy a business, such as photog- 
raphy, in which for a long time his work is of little value. 
Resting on the guild principle of guarding a local monopoly 

(299) 



300 Getting a Living. 

is the present charge by the theatrical workers' union in some 
American cities of an admission fee of $25 or $50, against the 
usual fee with unions of $1 to $3. In some American cities 
the unions of bricklayers and masons charge nearly as much, 
and the garment workers' national body has had to prohibit 
monopolistic fees by its local unions. A union of stone cutters 
at Newark, N. J., in 1889, resolved to admit no new members 
at all for one year. In past centuries in Europe a trade's 
monopoly was guarded in many ways, and its processes, men- 
tioned in apprenticeship indentures^ as ''mysteries," were 
probably kept as mysterious as was practicable. In several 
Irish cities, up to within the last twenty years, each of a num- 
ber of local trades defended its old monopoly successfully by 
ostracizing, and often by maltreating, incomers from other 
towns. 

^Binding the Apprentice to the employer's service by a hard and fast 
contract of indenture fell into disuse in America more than a half century 
ago; but until long afterwards, in small towns, the apprentice often lived 
with and drudged for the employer's family, according to a custom surviv- 
ing from the guild. His "keep" and his trade were his principal pay, his 
money wages not commencing perhaps until a year or more had passed, and 
being considerably smaller the last year of his term than the pay of a 
journeyman. 

The Passing Away of Strict Apprenticeship. The form of signing in- 
denture papers has continued in a few British trades down to recent years, 
but very little attention has been given to enforcement of such contracts, 
beyond following the understood customs as in trades using no indenture. 
In America an indenture contract is still made with apprentices of some stove 
foundries, iron works, and builders, and perhaps here and there with small 
old industries in small towns; but with these exceptions the practice scarcely 
exists to-day, or enforcement by law of any kind of apprenticeship contracts. 
The following of strict rules of apprenticeship has passed away because 
under the factory system it is to the employer's interest to have a worker 
learn only one process, but with freedom to change to another, and to the 
worker's interest also, in order that he may quickly reach the full pay of a 
journeyman, and find the process that suits him best. The trade unions, in 
their desire to limit the number of workers in a trade, and thus raise wages, 
not only strive to keep apprentices few, and the learning time long, but even 
in America many unions state among their objects the securing of uniform 
apprenticeship laws. It is unlikely, however, that in this country and at 
this day any idea of making people do what was claimed as best for them 
by persons adversely interested would justify as constitutional attempts by 
law to require a set standard of competency for admission to any occupa- 
tions except a few closely related to public health and safety. 



Learning a Trade. 301 

How Far Limitation is Successful To-day. The small 
trades in England mentioned above are mostly survivals from 
a past age. The only modern British union that is fully suc- 
cessful in regulating apprenticeship is the union of iron ship- 
builders. They are enabled to succeed by the fact that their 
industry exists in large establishments only, and by their gain- 
ing as members practically all workmen in the trade. They 
allow two apprentices to every seven journeymen, and require 
a definite contract of indenture to serve a prescribed time. 
This time varies in different trades, on both sides of the At- 
lantic, from three to seven years, being now usually three to 
five. A third reason for the success of the British ship- 
builders is that their limit permits an inflow of new men 
sufficient for the needs of the industry, so that self-interest 
does not lead employers to resist them. The limit of some 
other unions, set long ago, is too low, having been intended 
to give a monopoly value to the labor of those in the trade. 
The Alanchester union of printers has permitted not over three 
apprentices to an office, though the journeymen number a 
hundred. 

Learning the Trade Apart from Union Influences. The 
reason this Manchester restriction survived, without being 
broken by employers, or by consumers driven by monopoly wage 
prices to other towns for their printing, was doubtless the ease 
with which printers entered the city from small towns having 
no unions. In America the typographical union's local rule is 
one apprentice to every four or five journeymen, and one to 
each shop employing less than four or five. This is about the 
usual proportion with printers in British cities other than 
Manchester. But in both countries there are hundreds of 
printing offices in small towns without unions, from which any 
printer coming to a city is admitted to the union if he has been 
in the trade three to live years, and is a passable workman. 
Hence, there is really no union limit to the number who may 
enter the trade. This is the case with other occupations that 
can be learned in towns having no union, and in all other 
trades in which there are many non-union shops. Perhaps 
in America there are no close monopoly trades like those still 
surviving in Sheffield, though they are approached in power 



302 Get ting a Living. 

and practice of exclusion by the unions in the American glass 
trades.^ In the window glass trade, in which the trust monop- 
oly of employers charges double price under the tariff, the union 
was reported lately as imposing an initiation fee of several 
hundred dollars. The unions of stone cutters also use their 
exceptional power at some places in apprenticeship, allowing 
only two learners in a yard employing less than a hundred 
journeymen. 

The Real Limit is Set by Nature, however — in the ability 
of men, and in the difficulty of the trade. In what is perhaps 
the most successful and advanced union in the world, that of 
the Lancashire mule spinners, which by raising wages keeps 
profits always at the minimum, the two piecers employed by 

^The small union of tile layers has required the apprentice, after two 
years, to get a contract for two years at $3 a day for the first and $3.50 
for the second, and then to get $4 and pay from $25 to $100 initiation fee. 
By allowing only one apprentice to twenty men, unless the shop has fewer, 
and with an initiation fee of $100 for immigrants, the flint glass workers 
have kept wages at $6 to $9 a day for the ten months' season. Tack makers 
(only 300, $125 to $225 a month) admitted few except sons. (Bemiss, 1894.) 

Limitation of Apprenticeship by British Unions. Webb, in "Indus- 
trial Democracy," 1897, page 475, the source of the British information 
given above, prints a table from which the following figures are taken. 
Membership of unions whose regulations are really restrictive, preventing 
sufficient inflow of recruits, 15,000; unions with similar restrictions, but 
permitting unlimited apprenticeship of members' sons, 25,000; unions re- 
strictive, but admitting apprentices in proportion sufficient for the trade, 
50,000; unions only nominally restrictive, like that of the printers, 500,000; 
unions making no regulation of apprenticeship, 250,000 laborers and trans- 
port workers, and 650,000 workers in the mining and textile trades. 

In American Unions. Prof. Bemis found in 1891 that unions having 45 
per cent of the total membership (unions consisting mainly of railway, mine, 
and textile workers) attempted no restriction of apprenticeship; that unions 
having 16% per cent of the membership had national rules for restriction, 
but only those with 14 per cent enforced the rules successfully; and that 
unions with 39 per cent of the membership left restriction to their local 
branches, which at many places made no rule or failed to enforce it. Yet 
the latter class includes the unions of printers, cigar makers, carpenters, 
stone cutters, and machinists, all of which perhaps are generall)^ successful 
with a restrictive rule where the local union Is strong. The unions whose 
national rule Is well carried out include the glass workers. Iron molders, 
pattern makers, and hat makers. In some places In America bricklayers 
and coopers restrict apprenticeship to members' sons. {Social Science Jour- 
nal, Vol. 28, 1891.) 



Learning a Trade. 303 

each spinner to assist him, and promoted to be spinners when 
vacancies occur, form a group ten times as numerous as the 
recruits required by the trade. The bright and speedy men in 
the printing offices of American cities get high wages, not 
because of any Umit of one to five, but because from the un- 
numbered horde of "tourists" on the road, ''intelhgent com- 
positors" in country offices, and boy amateurs in kitchen attics, 
few can be found capable of filHng the city positions, and these 
few come within the influence of the union. 

If Every Boy in School Were Taught the Same Trade— 
its elementary principles — would not this teaching overcrowd 
that trade and lower its wages ruinously? Not necessarily. If 
only one trade were taught there would be at first attempts to 
follow it by too many recruits, but the higher grades of work 
would remain separate from their competition and command 
high pay as before, while in a short time boys would find the 
trade full and make perhaps no greater efforts to follow it 
than had been made before the teaching began. Though books 
and papers were given away free, the demand for them would 
employ as printers but a small fraction of the population. If 
all boys were taught printing in school, the mass of them 
^would no more think of following it as an occupation than they 
now think of becoming bankers because they have learned to 
compute interest, or authors because they have written school 
compositions. Those best suited to be printers would turn their 
attention to the trade early, and average skill of journeymen 
might be raised far above the present standard; but selection 
by employers of the most desirable boys and men would elim- 
inate from the trade those not needed, and turn them into other 
occupations. Then, from those selected, the best would be ad- 
vanced to more difficult work, and proper wages for any one 
would depend on what the public would pay for his product 
without ceasing to buy it, and what his grade of skill would 
bring in other work he might take up. Such is the process 
now. Unionism raises wages by making men shrewd sellers of 
their labor, and producers of the large output without which 
high wages cannot exist. But except in its few cases of unjust 
monopoly power it does not long obstruct the natural process 
by 'which a man tends to drift into the grade of work he is 



304 Getting a Living. 

best fitted for, and to get there such wages as the market value 
of his product justifies. 
Artificially Limited Apprenticeship Has Been a Monopoly 

Tax on the pubHc, for the benefit of those in the trade, so far 
as it has really raised wages by keeping the number of workers 
smaller than it would otherwise have been. Fencing in a trade 
artificially has effects decidedly evil. First, it may shut out 
some of those best fitted, who in other work may achieve less 
for themselves, and produce supplies or services of less value 
to society. Second, by shutting out these, and thus keeping 
in the less fit, it may retard the entire trade's progress, making 
its products less valuable, checking demand for them (espe- 
cially abroad), lessening the employment and wages the trade 
affords, and reducing its flow of supplies to consumers. Third, 
it injures many other trades by overcrowding them with those it 
shuts out, lowering wages in them and increasing unemploy- 
ment.^ 

The Same in Principle as a Doctor's Giving Medicine to 
Keep One Sick, in order to increase the need for medical 
service, and thus to justify a large aggregate charge — is the 
effort to make a trade harder to enter, that from scarcity of its 
workers and product the needs of consumers and employer 
may be made more pressing, and wages thereby raised. The 
body has ills enough, after medical science has done its best to 
remove the need for its services. Getting a living is hard 
enough, whatever is done to increase and cheapen the earth's 
products. With all the modern improvements, half the human 
race still go hungry. That each person can have the most 

^Adam Smith, keen to detect monopoly, called attention to the evil of lim- 
itation of apprenticeship, which, when he wrote (1776), was beginning to 
give way before progress. Economists of to-day are pleased to observe that 
such restriction is being given up. It has been one drawback to their usual 
friendliness toward unionism. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, unionism's 
foremost defenders, are emphatic in their condemnation of limitation of 
apprenticeship. ("Industrial Democracy," 481.) Well do they say that it 
must be unreservedly condemned, and absolutely abandoned ; that it is 
direct antagonism to the remainder of the working class and to the people 
as a whole; that the throwing off of this "old Adam of monopoly" will be 
facilitated by the modern mobility that has already made it mostly imprac- 
ticable. 



Learning a Trade. 305 

goods and services to enjoy, society wants every trade as easy 
as possible. Any attempt to change the present capitaHstic 
system of industry, further than by conservative correction of 
its abuses (page 48), will only make the hunger worse. The 
way to place one's business or work beyond the competition 
of others, without exploitation, is by progress to give better 
qualities and larger values.^ 

^How to Produce Enough is Still the Problem, despite the complaints of 
crowded trades and overproduction. (Chapter XVI.) It is well, by union- 
ism, and by going to other places and into other trades, to sell labor for the 
most, and thus perfect the distribution of wealth; but even then the gain is 
chiefly increase of production, in better product and better markets for labor. 
Great Britain's yearly product was computed in 1891 to be in value not 
over $180 for each inhabitant. That of America, with our unapproached 
resources in land, mine, machinery, and men, has been carefully computed 
to be not over $2 a day for each person in gainful occupations. To waste 
labor power is wrong. 

Similar to Tariff Protection, which prevents exchange of home goods 
for foreign goods more desired and more valuable, is the effort to limit the 
number in a trade. Both policies have come down from the mediaeval 
period, when the prevailing practice was to encourage some by taxing 
others — to tell people by law from whom they ought to buy and what to 
pay, as well as what they had to believe. Until a century and a half ago 
English law required a manufacturer to sell his wares through merchants, 
whether he desired to do so or not; and prohibited a mechanic from going 
into a strange city to work, or an employer from starting in business there. 
Birmingham and other cities in England took the lead industrially because 
the\^ were new places, unhampered by guild monopolies. The pretext of 
learning a trade thoroughly, used by the guilds to justify monopoly, is put 
forward in defense of trade union restrictions, as protectionists, with thinly 
disguised selfishness, try to persuade the buyer (who does the paying and 
the using) that cheaper foreign goods are of poor quality. The few skilled 
men in the guilds, by means of monopoly prices for their products, exploited 
the mass of the common people as truly as did the robber barons. Many 
skilled workers to-day seem to feel that it is their right to impose on the 
lower grades by shutting them out of trades — to be a privileged class them- 
selves while denouncing the privileged classes above. That the object is to 
better their own condition might be said as truly of embezzlers and forgers. 
These old policies of restriction die hard, being immediately advantageous 
to their beneficiaries, and so deceptive in their working that both the latter 
and their victims may not be conscious of the wrong. 

But There Was Some Reason for Mediaeval Restrictions in the ignor- 
ance prevailing among buyers in those days, so long as the powers that were 
sought such development of industry as promised to result eventually in 
most benefit for all. Evil arose when the favored guilds and protected 
20 



3o6 Getting a Living. 

Progress Has Delivered Us, fortunately, from restricted 
apprenticeship, as from other outgrown monopoUstic customs 
of the Middle Ages.^ From invention of machinery hundreds 
of new occupations have appeared. Where easily learned, these 
remain a field for the multitude of unskilled, who have never 
had an effectual way of limiting their number, or their product, 
in order to get higher pay. The skilled men in the guilds, in the 
palmiest days of the latter, were but a fraction of the popula- 
tion, an aristocracy of labor, ^as the members of the strong 
unions are to-day. In operation of machinery, as in handi- 
crafts, where difficulty of work has formed a skilled trade, 
strong unions exist; but their limitation of apprenticeship, as 
explained before, is usually made non-effective by opportunity 
of learning the trade apart from union influences. 

industries gained control of government, and sought to enrich themselves 
from their monopolies at public loss. For indulging in or permitting such 
selfishness or short-sightedness, though usually felt by the favored ones to 
be within their sacred rights (Webb cites a solemn assertion by liquor men 
to-day of a vested right in maintaining the people's habit of drinking), 
nature provides sure but somewhat slow punishment. A general custom of 
making things scarcer, and higher in price, either by tariff protection or 
limitation of apprenticeship, not only diminishes total sales and employment 
in one industry, but it leaves buyers less to spend for products of other 
industries, thus diminishing the income and consumption of the latter, and 
hence the sales and employment of industries in general. The people of a 
country can get to consume only what they produce, and each has only his 
own product to offer in exchange for the goods of others. To make product 
scarce is to make living poor. Moreover, while special favor causes an 
industry to flourish parasitically at first, its tendency later, under ordinary 
conditions, is to depend on the favor, and to achieve less for itself than 
would otherwise be the case. (See the author's book, "The Trusts and the 
Tariff," 1902.) 

^The Monopoly Motives Remain. But to retain the fruits of progress 
requires eternal vigilance. The selfish motives underlying the guilds re- 
main in human nature unchanged. Scores of laws enacted by the states, to 
shut out goods shipped from other states, to prevent people from following 
licensed trades, or from benefiting consumers with such cheap and whole- 
some substitutes as oleomargarine, — have been set aside by courts as uncon- 
stitutional — as not intended to benefit the public, but to enable some to profit 
at the unjust expense of others. In Germany cooperative stores have been 
hampered by legal restrictions secured by their enemies, the merchants, and 
in some American states building and loan associations have feared such 
opposition from banks. 



Learning a Trade. 307 

To Avoid Promoting Non-Unionism, a union must admit 
to membership any man who can really do the work, however 
he may have picked up the trade. The great Amalgamated 
Society of Engineers in England, finding that many a lower 
grade worker was learning their trade by being promoted from 
one machine to another, abandoned in 1885 their effort to shut 
out "illegal men," and have since admitted any person em- 
ployed in their work who can earn their standard rate. Thus 
they let their trade stand on its natural foundations. The 
strong unions of American boiler makers, carpenters, and stone 
cutters follow the same policy. The difficulty of the work, and 
the high level of pay to be earned in other trades by men hav- 
ing the grade of skill, are a guarantee that there is no danger 
of a lowering of wages from influx of new men. The union 
fixes a high rate ; the employer does the rest. He soon shuts 
out those incapable of earning it. The small old British unions 
mentioned (only 15,000 members in all) succeed in holding 
their monopoly because their industries are of little conse- 
quence. If their products were in good demand, men equipping 
large factories with improved machinery, or otherwise gaining 
advantage from use of capital, would soon train up a new 
class of workers, and thus bring the union's monopoly power 
down to a natural and wholesome basis. The limit of British 
shipbuilders admits perhaps as many new men as would enter 
without it. If so it is a limit only in name. Under the 
ideal of this age — equal rights to all, special privileges to none 
— workers in no important trade, especially if carried on at 
many places, can hope for wages higher than their level of skill 
and responsibility would bring in other occupations. 

The Apprenticeship Question is Settling Itself. This is 
evident from the unparalleled industrial progress of America. 
Here the old notions of men not having a right to a trade are 
least observed. There are two conditions whose existence here 
insures that trades will be learned, and learned well. One of 
these is a class of bright young men, eager for achievement; 
the other is a class of progressive employers, who are seeking 
just such young men. The meeting of these two classes leads 
to admirable results. Boys of nineteen or twenty become fire- 
men or brakemen on railways, and from their regular work, 



3o8 Getting a Living. 

paid for at good wages from the start, they learn to be engi- 
neers and conductors, and in due time are promoted. The same 
process of passing upward from a fairly well paid position as 
helper, into more difficult work, is followed in many modern 
occupations that have known little of apprenticeship. In many 
kinds of factories young men and women, learning in a few 
days to operate machines, soon earn fair wages at full piece 
rates. Often a person showing aptitude is quickly passed on 
to better paid work. Each worker gets the most from his time, 
and does not miss the loss of the discipline afforded by drudg- 
ing a year or two for less than enough for his board. Learning 
is quickly accompanied by earning. The fact that an American 
boy nowadays will not work unless he gets considerable pay 
from the start — often complained of by persons having the 
old ideas of apprenticeship — is probably a point in the boy's 
favor, revealing qualifications for success. It is surely an 
evidence that in the multiplication of modern occupations, en- 
tirely free from medisevalism, a boy or girl can now make 
money without having to spend years learning how. The 
emphasis in the past on thoroughness, though largely com- 
mendable, was also largely vitiated by its connection with the 
trade's monopoly. Consumers who buy will now give notice 
quickly enough of fault in quahty, being enabled to do so 
effectively by competitors offering better. To society, no less 
than to the boy, it is important that as little time as possible 
be spent on mere learning. The employer too is not inter- 
ested in adding to the learning period if the boy's wages are 
not kept down by more than the trouble of teaching him would 
justify — something that the boy of to-day guards against by 
keeping informed of what he might earn from others. In 
many factory occupations requiring no apprenticeship — only 
a natural quickness of mind, eye, and hand, with a few weeks' 
practice — the employer asks no wage reduction to balance his 
loss from the operative's period of learning, but is glad to pay 
full piece wages from the start. The usual willingness of 
American employers, unlike the European, to pay a boy all 
he is worth, not deducting for his learning, excuses them some- 
what for their common neglect to teach him. 

Overcrowded Professions. The time, expense, and ^ ability 



Learning a Trade. 309 

required to learn a profession are probably not a sufficient bar- 
rier to prevent overcrowding of the lawyers, physicians, and 
dentists.^ While the reward remains large for those of estab- 
lished success, the business for others Is sometimes divided 
among so many that a capable man may spend a long time In 
reaching a fair support. The professional code checks lower- 
ing of fees, but their fewness, where too many divide them, 
lowers Income none the less. Among book-keepers and 
stenographers capability is measured more quickly, and the 
system of working for employers. Instead of for the public, 
soon turns Into other lines those unable to get or hold posi- 
tions. They do not remain In the business, like some lawyers 
and doctors, for the sake of social standing, regardless of In- 
come in money. Average wages of book-keepers and stenog- 
raphers, like those of telegraphers, have been lowered greatly by 
the graduation annually of many thousands of young people 
from hundreds of business schools. But It Is doubtful If the 

^Raising the Standard of Admission to a Profession, as professional 
schools have been doing of late years, is not the same in principle, as is 
sometimes claimed, with an apprenticeship rule of one to five. Any number 
that can pass the examination may become physicians or lawyers. The 
workers in a trade, to limit their numbers in the same way, would need to 
separate themselves by raising their skill. This would be desired, both by 
employers and the public. The main objection to a rule of one to five is 
that a person's fitness for the trade, though he be a genius, gives him no 
chance to displace a journeyman who may be in the wrong occupation and 
not worth his wages. Besides, in associations of professional men, the main 
object is promoting skill, while in unions it is advantage for bargaining. 
Mr. Boulton, who seems to be a model president of the model union of New 
York stereotypers, did not notice that he surrendered in the contention when 
he said that a natural barrier against overcrowding is possessed by a pro- 
fession in the cost of education, but that a mechanical trade, having no such 
barrier in nature, must set one arbitrarily. (Outlook, March 28, 1903.) A 
mechanical trade has exactly the same natural barrier so far as it requires 
talent, and time and application in learning. Entrance to a profession is 
made much easier by the fact that in a school admitting all it can be learned 
with money earned in any work, and is not, like a trade, to be entered only 
through a few rare openings for apprentices. To add artificially to the 
natural difficulties of entrance is really less defensible wath a skilled trade 
than it would be with poor common laborers and machine tenders, whose 
work, seldom employing all of them with any approach to the regularity of 
skilled labor, is taken without compunction by the high paid unionist when 
his own employment fails long. 



3IO Getting a Living. 

competent are paid less now than before. The salary of a Jack- 
son book-keeper getting from $50 to $85 a month is not endan- 
gered by the presence in town of girl book-keepers getting but 
$2.50 to $5 a week, up to $10 for the best. Girl stenographers 
get about the same. The cheaper workers do not compete with 
the higher; and so far as ready means of learning enable the 
cheaper to pass to the work of the higher, the wages of the latter 
may be brought down no further than to the level of the same 
capacity in other occupations. Artificially holding wages above 
that level would be unjust to the public overcharged, and to 
those shut out of the profession. Persons having the ability to 
do the higher grade of work will not find it personally advan- 
tageous to enter the profession unless it will be equally advan- 
tageous to society. 

The Employer's Part in Solving the Problem. While mul- 
tiplication of new occupations in manufacturing and in com- 
merce, with easy access to old trades in shops not unionized, 
have given fairly adequate opportunities to learn to work, one 
important matter has been too far neglected. Under average 
conditions, in the busy life of to-day, the apprentice has had to 
pick up his trade as best he could, without any one's taking the 
responsibility to see that he learned it well, the practice going 
to the other extreme from that of the old apprenticeship. While 
there is good discipline, especially to a bright boy, in being 
thus thrown on his own resources, no effort on his part will 
suffice when he is kept aimlessly employed about the shop, on 
the work he happens for the time to do most profitably for the 
employer, and is given no systematic chance at the essential 
parts of the trade he is supposed to be learning. In this respect 
the enlightened self-interest of employers is bringing about a 
desirable change. In the skilled trades that yet require the 
long learning time of an apprenticeship — consisting of work 
not to be divided up into single processes quickly learned by 
a mere machine tender — the employer will eventually find it 
best, not to depend on inflow of men learning in small towns or 
in Europe, but to train up workers especially for his own busi- 
ness, losing a little in present value of a boy's service by giv- 
ing him the change of work necessary to make him most skill- 
ful and profitable later on. In railroading, perhaps the most 



Learning a Trade. 311 

advanced occupation of all, the tendency now is for each com- 
pany to train up its own employees. Not only is the way kept 
wide open to apprentices or promoted men in every depart- 
ment, but by entrance examination the best are selected, by 
watchful inspection merit is rewarded and demerit weeded out,, 
and by instruction from experts, kept traveling for the purpose, 
men are taught the most approved methods of doing their 
work. Having the modern spirit, unions of railway workers 
cooperate cheerfully with company rules evidently designed for 
the good of all concerned, and get the highest wages among 
manual workers, by rendering the service that deserves such 
pay, not in vain efforts to monopolize by keeping out new 
men. 

Encouragement to Develop Skill. As industry becomes 
less speculative, and more settled, great employers, realizing that 
on nothing, as a rule, is their success more dependent than on 
the skill and diligence of employees, are providing new and 
exceptional means for leading these into highest efficiency. To 
give apprentices and journeymen technical knowledge and 
enthusiasm, familiar talks by experts, with experiments, are 
provided at the employer's expense. Concerns doing this are 
mentioned in Mr. Patterson's article in Engineering Magazine 
of January, 1901. In the Elkhart shops of the Lake Shore 
railroad a free night school for apprentices was lately estab- 
lished, to teach mechanical drawing and other knowledge nec- 
essary in their work. Other companies are adopting this excel- 
lent plan, followed during the last thirty years in the famous 
printing press factory of R. Hoe & Co. in New York, while in 
several of the large cities schools for their own apprentices 
have been maintained at times by employers' associations in the 
building trades. The Calumet and Hecla copper mining com- 
pany of ^Michigan not only provides in its elegant free library 
the best books and papers relating to the trades of its em- 
ployees, but encourages boys, in reading these, to look forward 
to becoming its apprentices, and is thoughtful afterward of 
their advancement. The fruitfulness of such a policy can be 
imagined by any one who has been a boy himself. The Brown 
& Sharpe Company of Providence, in its machine shop, foun- 
dry, and pattern shop, hires adequately educated apprentices 



312 Getting a Living, 

between sixteen and eighteen, on a definite contract covering 
four years, and trains them to be thorough workmen, making 
it the duty of overseers to instruct them. This provision for 
apprentices doubtless has some connection as a cause with the 
high reputation of Brown & Sh^rpe machine tools, and with 
the choice of this establishment, by visiting French workmen 
in 1893, as the model shop of the many they saw in America.^ 

The Greatest Institution for Training Apprentices is the 
system recently introduced by the Baldwin locomotive works at 
Philadelphia, which is the largest establishment of its kind in 
the world. The first class of apprentices, grammar school grad- 
uates, serve four years, at wages of 5, 7, 9, and 11 cents per 
hour in each year respectively, with a bonus of $125 at the end 
of the term. The second class, high school graduates, serve 
three years, with wages of 7, 9, and 11 cents per hour, and a 
bonus of $100. Both these classes must take technical studies 
three evenings a week in a night school. The third class, com- 
posed of graduates of technical schools and colleges, serve two 
years, at 13 and 16 cents per hour. The company changes the 
work of each with sufficient frequency to carry out its contract 
to teach the trade. When this system is in full operation it is 
expected that four hundred capable mechanics and engineers 
will be turned out each year. About a thousand young men 
were under this instruction in 1902.^ 

The Effect on Advancement of Industry. The number to 

^E. Levasseur, "The American Workingman." 

^An article on apprenticeship in the Baldwin works appeared in The 
World's Work for Sept. 1901, and another on the Brown & Sharpe system in 
the same magazine for the following November. Both systems are described 
in the Seventeenth Annual Report of the U. S. Labor Department. 

The Midvale Steel Co. of Philadelphia, which has had great success 
with premium wages (see magazine citations on page loi) has always had 
regularly indentured apprentices, having 80 in 1900 out of 3,400 employees 
in all. The time is 3 years, and the pay 6 to 9 cents per hour, paid in part 
to the boy, to his parents, and to his savings account. Boys are carefully 
trained, and are given compulsory instruction three nights a week in the 
Franklin Institute near by. Most of them remain with the company as in- 
spectors and foremen, though President Harrah said he is glad to have them 
work for other concerns, that these may be friends, not enemies, of the Mid- 
vale company. (Indus. Com. XIV. cxxvi.) Another witness told of the 
eager use by his men of his free library of books useful in his trade. 



Learning a Trade. 313 

be graduated each year are many more than the Baldwin com- 
pany could employ as journeymen, though its total force now 
numbers about 13,000. Its object is not simply to train men for 
itself, but to utilize its unequalled advantages for teaching 
worthy boys a trade, and for giving the country a class of 
highly skilled mechanics. So far as pay for instruction may 
be collected by getting more work from enthusiastic boys than 
the same wages would buy otherwise, this tuition would gladly 
be given by boys everywhere for such a chance to learn so de- 
sirable a trade. In a few years, by this plan, the Baldwin com- 
pany can perceptibly raise the level of American industry, al- 
ready the highest in the world — not by reason of industrial 
training, in which we are far behind Europe, especially France, 
Belgium, and Switzerland, but by reason of our unequalled 
resources, enterprise, and ambition. The single concern that 
develops to the utmost, for its own good afterward, its appren- 
tices' fidelity and skill, will soon pass ahead of equal concerns 
that do not. This fact will tend eventually to induce all the 
important employers to provide adequately for apprenticeship. 
Aside from difference in natural resources, and in capacity of 
people, the nation that is most effectively trained in commerce 
and industry will rise highest in achievement. 

What is Unionism to Do About It? It does not seem tliat 
the Baldwin apprenticeship system could affect unionism 
materially. New men not limited in number have all the time 
been entering most trades in towns and shops not unionized, 
and by immigration from Europe, as in the well paid railway 
employments having no restriction. The foundation of union 
success has been the fact that in union towns it includes nearly 
all the capable workers, and that such men cannot usually be 
brought in from other towns to overthrow it. The interests of 
unionism are the interests of the latter also. The case will be 
the same with new men from the Baldwin works. Capable 
men there turned out will want as high wages as previous 
unionists get, and if not enough positions are to be had at that 
rate, men of their grade will cease entering the occupation. 
The policy of a union, it would seem, is to seek as at present to 
gain as a member every man it finds at work in its trade, and 
to teach him to hold his position and his wages by doing better 



314 Getting a Living, 

work than others who might be hired in his place. Only this 
superior capacity has maintained unionism heretofore. The 
influence of the feeling against non-unionists would have been 
brushed aside long ago if by hiring them at lowered wages 
the employer could have effected a substantial saving. 

A Union Encouraging Apprenticeship— inducing the em- 
ployer to train up his own journeymen — gains decided advan- 
tages. These are pointed out by the union partisan, Mr. Webb. 
It may be well to have a limit, to guard against a possible 
attempt to displace skilled men, even though the attempt would 
eventually prove a failure. But the average American em- 
ployer of capability has heretofore seldom wanted so many 
apprentices as reasonable unions permit.^ By the Massachusetts 
state census of 1885 the apprentices in the leading trades 
requiring apprenticeship were but a fraction of the union num- 
ber, being only i to 16 with tinsmiths, i to 19 with printers, 
I to 62 with carpenters, and still fewer with other trades. In 
the Boston masonry trades the union's agreement with employ- 
ers places no limit on the number of apprentices, but from 
natural causes the number is each year decreasing. Journey- 

^Not to bother with any is often the preference of active employers in fine 
work. In 1893 it was found that of at least 600 master painters of Phila- 
delphia not one in fifteen had a single apprentice, and some, employing each 
from 20 to 80 men, had had no learner for twenty years. In 1894 Prof. 
Bemis said he still thought there were a few hundred in America who had 
been shut out of trades by unions, but by inquiry he had learned of only two. 
Of 9,384 New York state strikes during 1885-89, only 114 related to ap- 
prenticeship, and of these only 17 per cent succeeded, against 62 per cent 
for the total. But Prof. Bemis must be mistaken in thinking a main reason 
for union objection to apprentices is that the piece worker loses time in 
teaching them. A piece worker could hardly be depended on to shut a door 
unless he personally wanted it closed. 

Will Men be Displaced with Boys? The common complaint among 
unionists, that without their restrictive rules skilled men, having families to 
support, would be displaced with boys, will not bear examination. Skill 
must be worthless indeed if it has to be forced on the employer by compul- 
sion. Where he wants to hire boys, his is boys' work, and they ought to 
have it, if they are above the working age set by law. If that age is too low 
it should be raised. A condition of idle men and busy boys will not arise if 
men devote their attention to men's work. And for bo\^s, for cheap men, and 
for women, the surest way to raise low wages is to allow them to do the 
work they are wanted for, instead of driving their wages still lower by 



Learning a Trade. 315 

men unionists, by taking an interest in the apprentice among 
them, and assisting him to learn, can make a staunch union 
man, and by recruiting their trade from local apprentices can 
strengthen unionism in their city. A man learning in a small 
town often fears and dislikes unionism. His inability there, 
unless he has especial aptitude, to learn the trade well, may in- 
stead of leaving more work for unionists, not only harm him 
and society by partial waste of his producing capacity, but 
when he comes to the city may add another to those workers 
who, though unable to hold a position in a union shop, are able 
under the low wages and low prices of scab shops to make deep 
inroads into the union shop's patronage. As to apprenticeship, 
the real interests of the union, of the employer, and of society 
are the same. There is large possibility for good to both sides 
in a settled agreement over the matter, such as that of unions 
and contractors in the masonry trade of Boston. 

crowding them out and thus exploiting them in their need, and in various 
results exploiting societ\^ too. The employer who hires these kinds of cheap 
help where he ought to hire skilled unionists is not likely to remain in busi- 
ness long. As to the public injury from poor quality, the choice of people 
who pay for and use the goods is safer to trust than the claims of people 
who want the work of making them but are not wanted by the employer. 
Keeping boys in school by law until nearly grown would make the most of 
their lives; but for fixing by law the number of apprentices, as the Germans 
do, it is difficult to perceive other reason than the continuance of skilled 
trades that the country would be better off without. 

Will the Boy's Teaching be Neglected? Moreover, as to the union- 
ist complaint that apprenticeship restriction is necessary to insure that the 
boy will be taught the trade thoroughly — such teaching is just what he does 
not want if workers already skilled in the trade are being displaced with 
workers unskilled. If the employer keeps the boy at the narrow specialty of 
feeding one machine, it is there that his labor is most valuable, and will 
bring most in wages. If the claim is true that as soon as he asks a man's 
pay he is displaced v/ith a new boy, this is another evidence that the skill is 
not valuable — that the work belongs to the unskilled, whose need for work 
is greatest. Besides, in the whole matter of learning trades, society's interest 
coincides with that of the employer rather than with that of the typical 
union. The employer and society- want every boy's labor applied where it 
will turn out largest product value; but the t\'pical union wants the fewest 
boys in its trade, wants the learning time to be long, and wants the learner's 
skill to rise not far above the average. If the boy's labor is applied where 
it is most valuable to the employer now% but where the wages and training 
together will not be most valuable to the boy in the long run, the remedy is 



3i6 Getting a Living. 

With Industrial Schools the State Can Best Uplift and 
Enrich Its People — can approach nearest to placing every per- 
son in the occupation for vv^hich he is best fitted, and nearest to 
leading him there into that development of his faculties which 
yields, for himself and for all others, the largest results possible 
from him in wealth and well being. In fact, in no other way — 
including with this the supplying of many kinds of industrial 
information and facilities — can the state promote growth of 
wealth otherwise than by maintaining justice and morality. 
Bounties and tariff protection, almost ' invariably, encourage 
the few at the expense of the many, and lessen the total 
product. Undoubtedly it is in manual training, with other 
forms of industrial education, that society's chief hope of better 
things is to be realized. The present advance of such educa- 
tion in America, though retarded by public indifference and the 
consequent lack of funds, insures for the near future a rate 
of progress never equalled heretofore. In the lower and inter- 
mediate grades manual training is giving the girls practice in 
sewing, cooking, and other most useful work, and is giving 
the boys an idea of the common trades, with some familiarity 
with the use of tools. These pleasant exercises give them a 
liking for school attendance, prevent growth of evil tendencies, 

for the boy or his father to get from the employer a contract providing for 
proper instruction, and to see that all the instruction is received for which 
the pay is kept low. Unionism's policy (perhaps often not attempted or not 
to be made effective) of having the boy not kept on a narrow specialty, but 
taught all the trade, is beneficial to the boy and to society, besides making 
him a good unionist, so far as the full trade is desirable, and the specialty 
not best to follow and to work up from. But there is risk of a union desire 
to keep the trade unchanged, when its subdivision into several trades would 
increase output for society, would increase its total of wages, though per- 
haps lowering pay or lessening work for some of the present unionists, and 
would not narrow the boy into an automaton, but would really develop him 
best if he looked out for himself properly. But for the union's interest in 
his instruction there is a safe basis in its desire that he reach at least the 
skill to uphold its high rate. The union wants to have the greatest skill 
there is, but individual use of it is different. 

\The editor of a Southern labor paper testified that in his opinion trade 
schools had fed the Negroes to demand the highest pay in reach. Union oppo- 
sition to Negro and Chinese labor has been one force in compelling them to 
take low pay in order to get work. In 1873 Chinese struck in a Pennsyl- 
vania cutlery shop for higher pay, and a hundred of them left for the West. 



Learning a Trade. 317 

turn the attention early toward industry, and cultivate such 
habits and such dexterity as will be highly useful in any occu- 
pation chosen.^ 

Various Forms of Public Industrial Education are now 

being provided in the more progressive American states. For 
those passing from the common schools, the city libraries are 
being supplied with books and papers relating to mechanical 
trades and general business ; the state is maintaining in high 
efficiency the schools of agriculture, mining, and textile indus- 
try (textile schools now flourishing in several states), and is 
providing in its university liberal instruction in all the sciences 

^Under the Admirable Industrial School System of Springfield, Mass., 
the city provides free, above the kindergarten and simple manual training 
of the lower grades, the following varieties of instruction: (i) A weekly 
afternoon class for mothers; (2) a six weeks' vacation school in shop work 
for boys; (3) cooking and housekeeping schools with an enrollment in 
1901 of 698, including evening classes of 200, composed of servants, 
women with families, and young women planning for homes of their own; 
(4) an evening school of trades, designed especially for men and boys 
at work, having an enrollment exceeding 300, which would reach 1,000 
if facilities permitted, the trades taught being machine shop practice, tool- 
making, plumbing, joinery, wood-turning and pattern-making, besides 
classes in drawing, electricity, etc.; and most important of all, (5) the 
mechanic arts high school, with 92 pupils and three four-year courses of 
study, one preparing for institutes of technology, one giving general 
scientific instruction required in various occupations, and one providing 
thorough shop practice in which fourth year students specialize for the 
trade they intend to follow. A school system with these invaluable features 
gives all the preparation that youths could desire for a start in their teens 
into practical life. They are led to a wise choice of an occupation, 
besides being so instructed in its scientific principles, and so practiced in 
its processes, that after going to work most of them reach exceptional 
proficiency, and in a small part of the time required under ordinary 
apprenticeship without school preparation. By state law in Massachusetts 
every town or city of 20,000 population must provide manual training 
in both elementary and high schools. In the whole country there were in 
1900 about 125 manual training high schools, Massachusetts having 2i, 
New Jersey 15, and Wisconsin 12. In the lower grades manual training 
is much more general, and seems destined to be adopted at all places 
having good systems of graded schools. It was taught in 1900 in the public 
schools of 170 cities, and in 350 other schools, including 120 that were indus- 
trial or technical. A list of the latter is given by the Industrial Commis- 
sion, Vol. XV. Great Britain, since 1884, has had a Parliamentary grant 
of $3,750,000 a year for technical schools, which in 1900 existed in over 300 
towns, and had 26,000 pupils. 



3i8 Getting a Living. 

involved in professional, commercial and industrial progress. 
To this extent the training must be largely at public expense, 
except where it is supplied by the great endowed institutions, 
such as the universities of the Eastern States. After diligent 
use of these means of instruction, the learning of a trade by a 
boy approaching manhood can be entrusted by the public, it 
seems, to the self-interest of himself and of the employers who 
need his services. But these various means of public instruc- 
tion, where there is wealth to tax, can scarcely be carried too 
far. It is by such knowledge that the most is made of a 
nation's resources, and of the lives of its people. The more a 
person is led to earn honestly for himself the more he has with 
which to patronize others, and the larger are the values in goods 
and services he produces for society.^ 

In Prisons, Reform Schools, deaf mute institutes, and 
orphans' homes, industrial instruction is carried much further 
than in the city high schools just described, the inmates of the 
former institutions being generally brought as far as prac- 
ticable to the proficiency of immediate wage earning as jour- 
neymen, and not simply prepared for rapid learning as appren- 

^Especially are Knowledge and Enthusiasm Needed by G-rown Men. 
Dissemination of these qualities, by means of lectures, institutes, technical 
schools and clubs — supported by the state and by societies — has added 
wonderfully to the prosperity of farming in Denmark and Holland, and is 
now having the same effect in Ireland. Results similar, though less marked, 
are flowing in America from the various government bureaus for spreading 
industrial information. In an inspiring article on "Possibilities of a 
New Trade Unionism," Percy Longmuir, in Engineering Magazine, April, 
1902, shows that unionists, now narrowly absorbed with interests of the 
present and largely blind to those of the future, might be given broad and 
sound views by means of public lectures and reports on trade, foreign 
competition, economics, etc., and thus made more ready to cooperate with 
capitalists of good intentions, and less given to overwrought suspicion. 
To realize the great possibilities of national well-being in collective bar- 
gaining (Chapter XXVII. ), the minds of the workers must be instructed 
and broadened. Moreover, such efficiency of mind is vitally essential to 
utilize safely the great possibilities of wealth increase that come from the 
passing of industry to large corporations. As these are powerful for evil 
as well as for good, the workers and the people must adjust themselves to, 
and regulate, the accompanying curtailment of their business freedom 
(page io8), or there will be grave danger of the social and political decline 
portrayed by Mr. Ghent in his book "Our Benevolent Feudalism." As civ- 
ilization rises, the difficulty of preserving freedom increases. 



Learning a Trade. 319 

tices. These delinquent or defective classes will not, 6v cannot, 
learn trades unaided. Only by giving them the ability and the 
habit of work can they be saved from injury or ruin to charac- 
ter, and society be relieved from the burden of supporting them 
without the return of useful things their labor will produce. 
As explained in the chapter on convict labor, it is a regret- 
table short-sightedness that raises among unionists an objec- 
tion to productive work by these classes, and to their learning 
of trades. Their defects make it hard enough for them to get 
a living, with all the training that can be given them, and make 
them troublesome enough to their relatives and to society. For 
the same reason, the many religious and philanthropic schools 
for teaching trades and needed professions to the colored 
people in the South are of greatest usefulness. These people 
need the better houses and conveniences that men thus taught 
can make, the better preaching and teaching. The race preju- 
dice that deprives them, when in trades and professions, of 
patronage from the whites, will scarcely prevent them from 
following these higher callings to serve one another. And 
in view of the usual difficulty of success in new undertakings 
by the public, there is perhaps no more fruitful field for private 
philanthropy than in endowing industrial schools in any large 
cities where they would not otherwise exist. Noted schools of 
this class, benefiting many thousands, are the Pratt Institute 
at Brooklyn, the Williamson Trade School at Philadelphia, 
the Lick school at San Francisco, and the Wilmerding school 
in the same city. 

Shall the Trade School be Open to All, or Only to Persons 
at Work? The many trade schools of Great Britain that 
teach complete trades — some supported from philanthropic 
endowments and others from public funds, technical instruc- 
tion being provided by all the important cities — are generally 
kept open in the evening only, and almost invariably admit 
none who are not already at work in the trade taught. This 
restriction is a concession to the trade unions. As a rule the 
schools that are open to all confine their teaching mainly to 
theoretic principles, as do higher institutes of technology, and 
give but little practice with tools, aiming only to fit for quickly 
attaining high proficiency under ordinary apprenticeship. On 



320 Getting a Living. 

the Continent also, where trade schools are older and much 
more numerous than in Great Britain, and where general in- 
dustrial instruction reached some years ago a high develop- 
ment, the trade pupils are mostly persons already at work in 
the trade, are sons of journeymen or masters, or are inhabi- 
tants of towns given over to some special industry — in short, 
they are persons who it is assumed will of course follow the 
trade concerned, and whose right to enter it is therefore not 
questioned by the union. How far in making concessions to 
unionism ought American trade schools to go? They seem 
to be following in this respect the policy that is wise. They 
do not now antagonize the unions, as was done in some cases 
a few years ago, by advertising their instruction as a means 
of overcoming union restrictions on apprenticeship ; but while 
holding a conciliatory attitude toward the unions the schools 
shape their policies, not to harmonize with unionism, but to 
answer best to the needs they are maintained to meet. For- 
tunately as unionism becomes far-sighted and sound, its old 
monopolistic opposition to the teaching of trades now seems 
to be surely and somewhat rapidly passing away. 

Trade Schools Not Needed for the Real Welfare of All 
Will Have Few Pupils. It is true that a school would have 
as good a right to teach bricklaying as book-keeping, if there 
were the same continuous demand for instruction in the former 
as in the latter. Bricklayers get as good or better wages 
than book-keepers, and are no more in need of help ; while 
the custom of teaching the one trade in schools and not the 
other could rightly continue only because a good reason ap- 
peared for the difference. But there is no danger that persons 
having the mind and the means for acquiring a trade properly 
exclusive, because really skilled, will do so if their entrance 
into it will lower its natural unmonopolized desirableness. 
Such accuracy of hand and eye as that required in the building 
trades is not to be taught at once by lectures and experiments, 
but is to be acquired only in long practice, and not thus except 
by the few naturally fitted. A person who would choose from 
such trades, and had the necessary strength, could seldom 
afford to spend time and money at a trade school, especially 
when by working as an apprentice or helper he could learn 



Learning- a Trade. 



321 



and earn wages at the same time. It is obvious that schools 
teaching complete manual trades are so rare^ simply because 
solid demand for them is lacking. Such schools would have 
flourished long before this time, whatever the opposition of 
unionism, if their instruction were worth a remunerative 
payment of money in tuition. Self-supporting schools are 
numerous for teaching occupations that can mainly be learned 
by study — and not conveniently otherwise — book-keeping, 
telegraphy, stenography, civil and other kinds of engineering, 
teaching, and even proof-reading, watch-making, advertisement 
writing, and art for money's sake. It might be said that the 
lack of demand for school instruction in manual trades is due 
to poverty of the class who want to learn them. But as wa^^es 
in the manual trades average perhaps higher than in most of 
the more attractive and genteel occupations named, and as the 
fathers of those who learn the former earn probably as much 
as the fathers of those who learn the latter, it seems clear that 
there are sufficient means of access to the trades without ex- 
tensive aid from trade schools. 

Providing for Those Who Lack Opportunity to Learn 
Trades, however, is the very valuable service rendered by 
the few schools we have which teach full manual trades to 
any qualified person applying. To these schools young men 
can come from country towns where skill in trades is low, 
and from cities in which monopolistic unions rule.^ Inesti- 

^There is probably in the whole world not one such school that is sup- 
ported wholly by fees and is conducted for profit, like schools of book-keep- 
ing. It seems also that special provision by employers for teaching appren- 
tices is not needed in trades easily recruited from small towns. The 
apprenticeship schools conducted in several large cities by builders' ex- 
changes have all been discontinued. Such a school planned in Boston in 
1891 (when trade schools were prominent in discussion), was never started, 
and a trade school now existing there is only fairly successful. 

"A youth of nineteen convicted of crime near Indianapolis in 1902 said, 
according to the newspaper reports, he had committed the crime in order 
that he might learn a trade in the reformatory, having been shut out from 
trades by unions. Moreover, where unions do not restrict apprenticeship 
unduly, some young men for whom a plain mechanical trade is best will 
learn it in a school, but for social reasons will not endure the long drudgery 
of apprenticeship. Not only should public opinion be m.ore decided in ap- 
proving choice of mechanical occupations, but, as stated by an educator 
21 



322 Getting a Living. 

mably useful in this respect has been the New York Trade 
School, founded and endowed twenty years ago by a philan- 
thropist, Colonel R. T. Auchmuty, and conducted since his 
death by a board of trustees, cooperated with by associations 
of New York employers in different building trades. In 1901 
it had 223 day pupils in 8 trades (118 of them in plumbing), 
and 448 evening pupils in 13 trades (116 of them in plumbing, 
32 in bricklaying, and 54 in electrical work). Since the be- 
ginning this school has enrolled 8,674 pupils, coming from 
many states, of whom 2,900 have received certificates of pro- 
ficiency. This seems to be the only school on either side of 
the Atlantic that teaches youths and adults complete skilled 
trades in a short time (a half year or less), fitting a few of the 
experts to work at once as journeymen, at full wages, and 
others to do this after a year's experience as improvers. The 
Wilmerding school at San Francisco is similar to this, its 
object being to fit boys "to make a living with their hands, 
with little of study and plenty of work;" but its pupils are 
younger, and its course occupies four years. The other trade 
schools in America, perhaps less than three dozen, are privately 
supported philanthropic institutions, and, except those for the 
blacks and poor whites of the South, are designed to give rather 
short and elementary industrial training to the poor in cities, 
or to supply under low fees, to worthy young people, instruc- 
tion mainly theoretical, and which, excepting a few evening 
classes, is given m long and complete courses. In the South- 
ern industrial schools also the manual labor occupies only a 
part of the pupil's time, and is largely intended to enable him to 
pay his school expenses. In the preceding sentences no refer- 
ence is made to advanced scientific schools, such as those of en- 
gineering, nor to public manual training high schools, few of 
which give so much trade instruction as does that of Spring- 
field ; but the number three dozen probably covers all the 

before the Industrial Commission, school arithmetics should have fewer ex- 
amples of sales and profits, and more examples relating to speed of machin- 
ery and strength of materials, in order that boys may not be led, as at 
present, to overcrowd store and office employment, but may be turned into 
more useful mechanical work. 



Learning a Trade. 323 

trade schools excepting such as the small enterprises of local 
churches. 

Unions Should Encourage Industrial Schools, cooperating 
with them, and thus influencing their policy to some extent in 
favor of unionism, instead of opposing them and their grad- 
uates, and thus forcing them into what some unionists have 
denounced them to be, namely, recruiting stations for scabs. 
The reasons why American unions should complete their al- 
ready started change of policy toward industrial schools are 
unanswerable. Facts proved in the preceding pages are ( i ) 
that the wages of a trade, and the inflow of men into it, 
depend on the grade of capacity it requires, never on appren- 
ticeship restrictions except in the few cases of exploitation by 
a monopolistic union; and (2) that whatever the attempts to 
teach a trade, the inflow of workers into it will soon settle at 
the number its conditions properly require. Besides these two 
reasons, sufficient of themselves, are others of cogency. First, 
in nearly all of the industrial instruction there is no intention 
to teach full trades or to avoid apprenticeship, but only to im- 
part the knowledge and training that will insure the choice of a 
trade one is fitted for, the development of a character that will 
not dishonorably stoop to scabbing, and the acquisition of the 
skill, the ambition, and the trade spirit that will lead their pos- 
sessor to unite in proper unionism for securing all advantages 
in reach. Second, the many persons from schools who do not 
choose manual trades are led by their own experience in indus- 
trial training to understand and respect work with the hands, 
as well as the worker himself and his union, instead of simply 
hearing of the "dignity of labor" from persons who do not act 
as if they believed in it, and instead of imbibing the Greek 
contempt for manual labor, which still ''permeates our public 
school system, and poisons the minds of our children against 
those who work for a living." Third, nothing that trade unions 
can do would equal liberal industrial training in grammar and 
high schools to check the wage lowering brought about by the 
labor of children. ''Of the nearly 500 boys in the manual train- 
ing high school of Chicago, over 90 per cent, it is stated, would 
have left the grammar school at fourteen for the factory or the 
store had there been no manual training high school to attend. 



324 Getting a Living. 

The parents and the boys realize that the three years spent in 
this school will give a training worth more than the boy could 
earn in that time." ^ 

^Quoted from the Illinois Labor Bureau's report for 1900, from which a 
number of the facts and ideas in these pages are taken. The latest and 
most complete source of information on industrial education in all countries 
is the U. S. Labor Department's Seventeenth Annual Report, 1902. Its 
previous report on the same subject was issued in 1892. 

Trade Apprentices in Public Schools. During the first quarter of 1903 
several rooms of a Chicago public school were occupied by 123 indentured 
apprentices, who work at bricklaying the remaining nine months of the year. 
In school, for which they are eager, having asked and obtained an extra 
hour, they study mechanical drawing and the sciences involved in their 
trade, receiving while at school their regular wages. The school was 
opened by the board of education on joint petition of the masons' union and 
of the employers' association. It is managed by the joint arbitration com- 
mittee, which fixes the boy's pay at $260, $300, $350, and $400 for his four 
years respectively. For each unexcused absence two days without pay are 
added to his term, and one day for each case of disorder or tardiness. A 
fine of $5, used for text-books, is imposed on the employer for each day he 
keeps a boy from school, and on the journeyman for each day he works 
with a boy thus kept away. An employer can take only one apprentice a 
year. The mason employers' national association has voted in favor of 
such schools for each city. One has been proposed by the Chicago carpen- 
ters' union, and other trades may follow. {World's Work, April, 1903.) A 
lecture and study course of about twenty weeks for members has been con- 
sidered by the national union of stationary engineers. There are one or 
two places at which union printers, for a fee, may learn to operate the 
costly linotype type-setting machine. In New York city electrical workers 
must pass a rigid examination before a board composed of two from the 
union and two from the employers' association. By this board $2,800 in 
fees were lately paid back to applicants failing to pass. 

This Cast Iron System of trade control by a joint agreement may now 
be desirable in some respects (Chapter XXVII. ), but, since it would be 
partially a return to the guilds, and would expose outside workers and the 
public to monopoly, it is far from being the ideal of this age of liberty for 
trade schools. The ideal for the latter seems to be the Springfield system, 
seeking the cooperation of employer and employee, and aiming soundly to 
benefit both, but not being ruled by either, and being designed for the good 
of the public as a whole. Its status as a public institution relieves it from 
the union hostility to the schools of employers' associations. It should be 
as free from selfish control as are law and medical schools, and like them 
will benefit, not harm, the workers so far as they do not seek unjust 
monopoly gain. British union committees have often cooperated with trade 
schools, giving suggestions and criticisms, and practically requiring appren- 



Learning a Trade. 



325 



Employment Depends on Having the Skill that Secures 
Customers. Fourth, American trade unionists, whose ten- 
dency, in a fear of being surpassed and of having the work 
divided into shares too large, has probably been to disfavor 
rather than to encourage speed and skill above the respectable 
average necessary to maintain a union rate, have practically 
the same interest as their employers in reaching a high average 
of proficiency in those trades which must meet competition from 
other states and other countries. British unionists learned to 
appreciate this fact twenty years ago, when by a scare as to 
competition from Germany industrial education in Britain was 
taken up with vigor. Some of the labor leaders then advocated 
even compulsory education of working apprentices at public 
expense ; and they now urge additional technical education 
when the alleged decline of British industry is charged to 
unionism's short days and high wages. On the Continent, 
where as in Britain the main industry of many a town depends 
on keeping to the front in order to hold foreign customers, trade 
unions have in many cases urgently favored the excellent public 
trade and technical schools with which industrial Europe 
abounds. Beginning in 1884, and granting petitions from 
trade unions, laws have been enacted for all Switzerland by 
which employers who systematically train apprentices accord- 
ing to school board regulations are liberally paid by the public 
for giving this instruction. European unionists realize that 
since youths must and will get a living by work of some kind 
on leaving school, the only wise policy is to win them to union- 
ism, and increase the country's trade and employment, by 
facilitating their acquisition of the highest proficiency. Evi- 
dently these European unionists are so confident of their own 
merits as not to fear an endangering of their own positions by 

tices to attend ; but the Continental unions, having less power, seem to co- 
operate with a wider view to the good of the whole trade and nation. Amer- 
ican workers attend the evening classes, and in a few cases a local union 
has cooperated with suggestions and examinations, but unions have been 
disposed to forbid members to teach in trade classes, and their opposition 
to such classes, though decreasing, seems not to have decreased further than 
appeared necessary under the inevitable coming of industrial education. 
(See Prof. Bemis's pamphlet, 1894, No. 129 of American Academy of Po- 
litical Science.) 



326 Getting a Living. 

thus promoting unionism for the future; and evidently also 
they do not try to save themselves by crowding the young men 
into the trades not unionized, or into the scab and country shops 
in which they can only learn enough to become non-unionists 
and perhaps anti-unionists. ^ 

^The Superiority of Workers Trained in Industrial Schools. The 
well known preeminence of the French in artistic work is largely due to 
their earliest adoption and best development of industrial education. To a 
similar educational policy is due, in important respects, the recent remark- 
able progress of Germany. In America employers notice at once the supe- 
riority of apprentices coming from industrial schools. Building contractors 
prefer boys from the New York Trade School and the Pratt Institute. An 
investigation published in the labor department report of 1892 showed that 
701 out of 808 employers gave preference to graduates of manual training 
schools, and 316 paid higher wages to them than to other beginners. Out 
of 808 graduates 671 were above the ordinary in use of tools, 460 in economy 
of material, 652 in planning work, and 703 gave promise of more intelligent 
work. Out of 536 reported 362 were credited with superior moral qualities. 
The Chicago manual training high school is overcrowded, and hundreds of 
employers give preference to its graduates. It is obvious that boys taught 
the scientific principles of a trade, and given some practice in its processes 
under expert instructors and with the best tools and machines, could not fail 
to surpass other apprentices that had not had such advantages. 

But the Monopoly Spirit and Trade Education Will Not Harmonize. 
First, the present unionist will lose by industrial education for the young so 
far as with its raising of his trade's skill he does not keep up. This burden 
he must take, not only for the sake of increased product and wages in his own 
trade, but also for the sake of the increased market, and the possible in- 
crease of wages, that will come to his trade from the industrial education's 
effect to increase skill, product, and consuming demand in all other trades. 
But apparently there is little danger that in any progressive trade increase 
of its own skill will cause its pay per unit of skill and of effort to fall, and 
necessitate much more effort to earn a little more pay. In progress hitherto 
such has been the case with capital, in fall of interest, but not with labor. 
Second, though young men of well rounded education, with the broad and 
just views that are essential to highest democracy, will accord full dignity 
to labor, will demand ail the pay in reach, and will not oppose unionism as 
is assumed and desired by many who favor trade education, nevertheless, 
such young men will see all sides of a question, and may not follow a 
policy simply because it springs from the union. Electrical workers testi- 
fied that in strikes they fear the men from technical schools. The latter's 
failure to coalesce with the former may be due mainly to unionism's excess 
of class spirit, and to its depending too much on coercion and not enough on 
proving merit. Pupils of the Lowell textile school, which was opposed by 
the union, took places in the late strike, which strike some careful observers 



Learning a Trade. 327 

deemed unjustified. From each side, that of the unionists and that of the 
students, there doubtless needs to be some approach toward the other, which 
in each case will be made when the school trained become numerous, and 
when both sides better understand the situation. 

Another Chance for the Employer to Improve Unionism (page 297) 
lies in the matter of apprenticeship. Miss Addams says the meeting of men 
in unions imparts trade pride and inspiration, making them better workers, 
and that one reason wh}^ domestic service has not improved is that the girls 
have no time for unions. Though unionism does give one some pride in 
his trade, it seems that it has been so absorbed with pursuit of power to 
bargain, and so ready to resort to monopoly, that its only important part 
in advancing industry has been in the effect of bargaining demand to 
strengthen character, and in the effect of its high wages to force men to 
work well to maintain them, and to force the employer to do his part pro- 
gressively. However, it has been the employer's readiness to destroy union- 
ism that so concentrated its energies on bargaining, led it to favor a skill and 
ambition only moderately high, and led it to view trade processes and 
progress too narrowly in the light of probable effect on wages. The em- 
ployer, by willing recognition of unionism as inevitable, and by turning 
from opposition to cooperation with it, can lead it to take larger interest in 
promoting skill, as was done by the guilds, but without their monopoly. In 
France and Belgium the unions, partly for instruction of workmen's sons, 
and partly for extension of market and of employment, are often affiliated 
with the trade schools, sometimes taking the initiative in starting them, and 
are almost as eager in favoring them as are employers. The broad-minded 
employer can do most of all toward the enlightenment recommended by Mr. 
Longmuir (referred to above). 

Are Unionists Hostile to Native American Workmen? A belief that 
they are was current to some extent about ten years ago. It is expressed by 
Mr. Henry Wood in his book 'Tolitical Economy of Natural Law," by Col. 
R. T. Auchmuty in a letter in American Social Science Journal,. Vol. 28, 
1891, and especially in a series of articles in the Century Magazine in 1893. 
The prompt admission of foreigners, upon arrival, to the union of their 
trade, a fact dwelt upon in the Century, is not done to favor them, but is 
simply following the custom of admitting all qualified men from anywhere, 
especially those who are already brother unionists. To exclude newcomers 
would strengthen non-unionism. But since then, one strong union of glass 
workers has attempted to check the coming of foreigners into its trade by 
charging them an admission fee of $50 to $ioo, against $5 for domiciled 
Americans, with at least two other unions making such a difference, but 
smaller; while the American Federation, and unionists generally, have long 
sought to restrict immigration, and secured the enactment of the law of 1885 
excluding immigrants coming under contract. Yet some preference for for- 
eigners in a union composed chiefly of foreign members would seem un- 
avoidable. 

The Country Boy and the Unions. The belief that the native Ameri- 



328 Getting a Living. 

can is not wanted in unions may have been strengthened from such experi- 
ences as those of the young men graduated from Col. Auchmuty's school, in 
their efforts to get employment. Feeling against them might arise from the 
fact that they acquired the trade in a way deemed hurtful to unionism, if 
not positively hostile. Even the editors, or not a few of them, with no 
feeling of unionism involved, have seemed inclined, further perhaps than is 
warranted, to disparage the possibilities of schools of journalism. More- 
over, the sentiments of the young men referred to would scarcely coincide 
with those of the working class in the cities. The typical American youth 
from a small town, especially a youth that would go off to a trade school, 
expects to be an employer himself, and is more intent on working hard and 
saving money than on righting class wrongs he has never felt. Hence, 
especially when he seems reluctant to identify himself with unionism, the 
"labor agitator" is not drawn toward him. But, except possibly in a few 
cases where the local union has abnormal monopoly pov»^er, he is promptly 
admitted, to keep him from strengthening non-unionism; and the preference 
of many employers for steady workers from the country probably balances 
any tendency of union foremen to select city men of their own class or 
nationality. Some unions are careful to teach that the foreman is the man 
to see for employment, and the custom is to ask for him, but many employers, 
especially the smaller, do the hiring, or much of it, themselves, while with the 
larger it may fall to a superintendent beyond union influence. Strong unions 
in New York encourage the hiring of men from the union rooms, where the 
idle must be taken in order from the roll, but any one may be discharged at 
once if not competent. The German printers (page 291) require employers 
to get their help at the union rooms. However, the young man from the 
country, when once in fraternal association with unionists, soon feels their 
interests to be his, and to a large extent shares their ideas, uniting more 
closely as he finds it impossible to become an employer. Their attitude and 
his arise naturally from experience and self-interest. 

The Proportion of Foreigners in Unions. The foreign class probably 
form no larger proportion of unionists than of the total workers in the 
unionized trades. In New York city, overwhelmingly foreign in population, 
a union should be so too, especially if it were in a trade given over mainly 
to some foreign race. The Pennsylvania labor department concluded from 
an investigation that the proportion of foreigners was smaller in the unions 
than in the total of unionists and non-unionists together. At some places 
along the lakes local employers sometimes feel that a group of Swedes con- 
tentedly unloading a coal vessel might be stirred into a strike if an Irishman 
came to work among them. Here, too, experience and temperament have 
made each man what he is. The warm-blooded Irishman, having suffered 
wrongs at home for generations, could scarcely be otherwise than jealously 
watchful of rights and interests, sometimes perhaps finding wrongs where 
none exist; while the phlegmatic Swede, having had no wrongs to complain 
of, is only true to his nature and experience when he accepts conditions as 
satisfactory, and patiently makes the best of them. The need is to avoid 
going too far in either direction. In America, as elsewhere in the English 
speaking world, the English, Irish, and Scotch are found among the most 



Le amino- a Trade. 



329 



active unionists. It was among them at home that unionism originated, 
especially the English. Men of the native American class are probably not 
less ardent unionists when settled in life as city wage workers. Continental 
Europeans in America know the need of social reform in their home lands, 
and when not isolated by language, ignorance, or location, they enter heartily 
into unionism here. By nature self-interest will lead any people to embrace 
unionism when they come into the conditions under which it flourishes. To 
the English working class at home it is almost a religion. Their need for 
it is greatest, and the benefits they have derived from it are the largest and 
clearest. 

Four-fifths of the mechanics and artisans of Illinois, as far back as 1886, 
were of foreign antecedents and habits. The proportion may be larger 
now. In Chicago farmer boys from the Atlantic states have proved least, 
and the Germans most, responsive to unionism. The foreigner, shut In at 
home between walls of caste and habit, follows his father's trade, while 
the American boy seeks to rise above his father, is averse to rough work. Is 
not technically trained in school, finds the trades hard to enter and the 
workers not very congenial, and too often becomes a poorly paid clerk. The 
railway brotherhoods consist chiefly of Americans; some other unions con- 
sist chiefly of foreigners. Of the total of Illinois unionists in 1886, the 
native born were only 32 per cent (Bemis.) 



CHAPTER XII. 
HIGHER WAGES FROM HIGHER PRICES. 

Do Wages Depend on Price, or Price on Wages? The 

minimum wage of bare subsistence (page 129) has always been 
recognized ; that is, a support sufficient to maintain wage 
workers in health, and to rear enough children to take their 
places. Price of a commodity cannot long remain so low as not 
to afford at least this minimum w^age to the workers who pro- 
duce it. Removal to other places or other occupations in the 
present period (starvation sometimes in periods past, and to 
some extent now in shortening of life), soon raises price by 
decrease of workers and of supply produced. If price must be 
kept high enough to pay this minimum, why can it not be kept 
high enough to pay more? This has been an important ques- 
tion in late years among British unionists. Wages for men as 
low as $3.50 to $6 a week are a more serious matter in Great 
Britain than in America. The costs of living are higher there, 
and such wages are received by a much larger proportion of the 
people. 

The Demand of British Unionists for a Living Wage. 
however low the price of the commodity may fall, is being 
recognized; and in the sliding scale wage contracts in coal 
mining it is now agreed that under no fall of price shall men 
be asked to accept less than a certain minimum, deemed neces- 
sary for a decent support. Employers are thus giving up their 
favorite contention, that wages must continue downward with 
fallirg prices, though of course in this the bottom limit of 
enough to support life was always implied. The settled policy 
of these miners' unions is to stop work rather than take less 
than the agreed minimum wage, and thus to force employers 
to restrict production if price falls too low to afiford that rate of 
pay. That if one has to starve he may as well starve resting, 

(330) 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 331 

is sometimes asserted by a person wlio has no intention to starve 
at all. The best effect is that employers give up thought of 
saving from wages, and find their gain in use of better ma- 
chinery, and in more systematic marketing. Under piece-rate 
payment, this minimum support involves a guarantee of enough 
days of v^ork per month to earn it. 

A Similar Minimum Wage is Acknowledged in All Coun- 
tries, less than which an employer, in deference to custom, 
would be ashamed to offer. The reasons why the question 
arose in Great Britain, instead of in other lands of low wages, 
are ( i ) that a larger proportion of Britons are engaged in man- 
ufacture for world markets, at prices hovering so near cost as 
often to threaten overproduction and suspension of work; (2) 
that employers, tmder these conditions, went furthest in giving 
up the old feeling of personal responsibility for employees' 
welfare, and in leaving poor relief to the state; and (3) that 
British wage workers, being more generally unionized than 
those of any other land, are more active in efforts to improve 
their condition themselves. The millions of workers in Con- 
tinental Europe receiving wages lower than those of the 
British are assured an endurable measure of rough comfort by 
local customs of easy rent, of use of garden land, and of other 
help from the well-to-do. Some sections of British laborers 
also, at money wages for farm work in a few districts down 
to ten shillings a week ($2.43), without board, are likewise 
provided for. The case is similar in the American South, with 
farm wages ranging from $7 to $10 a month and board. In 
the more progressive portions of America, by reason of large 
product, high wages, and cheap supplies, there was no occa- 
sion for rise of the question of a living wage until the compar- 
atively recent crowding of people into industrial centres. 
There they have been subject to occasional want from failure 
of employment, have been too numerous for the local assist- 
ance given in rural districts, and have been unable to go else- 
where after the usual practice of Americans. The question of 
a living wage has risen in the anthracite coal field of Penn- 
sylvania, where average employment of miners during 1893-97 
was only 150 days per year — conditions in some of the soft 
coal fields being then as bad or worse ; and the question is 



332 Getting a Living. 

now a pressing one among the sweated clothing workers in 
New York, who are too numerous for the demand in their 
trades. 

How Far can the Standard of Living be Raised? It might 
be asked that if wages can be kept up at all by keeping up 
price, why cannot price and wages be raised in every trade 
until all are well paid? It looks as if something ought to be 
done in this way toward giving everybody a good living. A 
small addition to prices might be sufficient, so small as not 
materially to reduce sales, while the new order was being 
established. If a person's support still required, as previously, 
three-fourths of his income, the remaining fourth, with higher 
wages, w^ould be a larger sum, enabling him to buy a home 
and become a substantial citizen. Higher wages would give 
workmen larger ability to buy and consume, and by making 
trade of every kind brisk would give larger buying ability to 
other classes also, and thus enable manufacturers to get back 
easily in higher prices the higher wages they would then gladly 
pay for the sake of cheerful and efficient work. Some labor 
leaders seem to hope for a good time coming by and by, when 
unions will be organized in every trade, and will include so 
large a proportion of all the working people that sim.ply by 
their united demand w^ages of every kind will be made perma- 
nently higher. But is such a complete organization of men into 
unions, difficult as it may be, all that is lacking to secure aboli- 
tion of poverty for those willing to work? If so, reformers 
in general c r.ght quickly to become labor agitators and organ- 
izers. 

Impossibility of Raising All Prices. The answer is that 
even if it were possible for all trades, with every workman in 
the country standing ready for a strike, to make at once a 
demand for higher pay, prices could not be raised to meet it, 
and if a strike were declared industry would stop a few weeks 
tmtil want brought the strikers to terms. The workers would 
not have first the extra pay with which to raise prices by in- 
creasing their buying, and if it w^ere granted them their buying 
of different commodities would not increase in the same pro- 
portion, and some industries having to pay the high wages 
would not have the demand for their products increased ac- 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 333 

cordingly. Supposing that under higher prices the rich contin- 
ued their buying luichanged, which would not be the case, 
sales of goods w^ould fall off among the large farming class, 
depending on wheat and cotton, whose home price is fixed by 
demand abroad, in markets supplied from all producing coun- 
tries. Prices of many other commodities also, that are largely 
exported, depend on foreign demand. Persons already living 
up to their incomes, and unable to raise their own prices, would 
be compelled to buy less under higher prices for the goods of 
others. 

The Delusion in the Idea of good times by raising all 
prices, all wages, and all profits, arises from the thought of 
price in money, which thought has been the basis of the oft 
repeated agitation for inflation of the currency by issuing 
paper notes, and by unlimited coinage of mcreased and de- 
preciated silver. Dropping the confusing idea of money, which 
has filled the world with fallacies, and thinking only of com- 
modities, which are the things wanted, we readily perceive 
that to get more of them is the only way to get a better living. 
The quantity of one thing another thing will trade for, while 
the reasons for using them remain unchang-ed, depends on the 
quantity of each that is produced. Not considering debts, nor 
the blighting influence on business of monetary and price 
uncertainty, the settled quantity of money has no effect on 
present supply of useful things. If prices were set in dollars 
for comparison of values, and barter could be made conven- 
ient, things would exchange for one another as at present if 
no money w^ere used. Eventually it is all commodities for com- 
modities. 

The Only Ways of Escape From Wages Kept Low by Low 
Prices are expressed in the commonplaces stated in previous 
chapters. The employer, whether or not high wages press on 
his profits, makes price as high as he can. Generally he must 
simply make the best of a low price until it rises naturally from 
causes beyond his control ; as from better crops giving fcn-me^-s 
more with which to buy ; or from decrease in output of his 
competitors, as when their mines or forests begin to fail. 
Sometimes he gets a better price by raising quality, or by find- 
ing, new markets, and sometimes he gets more profit from the 



334 Getting a Living. 

same price by lowering cost with improved machinery or with 
cheaper materials. The only remaining way to raise a com- 
modity's price is by combination of its important competing 
producers into a monopoly trust. Besides being impossible 
where competing producers are numerous or are scattered 
over different countries, or where the industry is easily entered, 
this method involves a diminution of output, so that at the 
higher price none will be left unsold, and hence not only gives 
the people less of the commodity to consume, but by reduc- 
ing employment and leaving men idle the workers of the indus- 
try are rendered less able than under a natural rise of price to 
secure a share of the added profit. For a union to force a rise 
of prices that are too low to afford reasonable wages, it must 
bring under its influence all who might take its men's places, 
and then have those of its men leave the trade who would be 
left idle by the reduction of output necessary to make price- 
higher. This can properly be done in some cases, but a surer 
way is for men to escape individually into better paid trades 
at home, or to go to other states or countries. Individually 
raising the efficiency of one's labor, to retain which the em- 
ployer will share its added value in higher wages, can nearly 
always be done, but would perhaps be poorly rewarded in a 
trade under the condition here considered. To get away from 
such a trade would be safer. 

What if Higher Prices Should Diminish Exports? Fear 
of this effect on British trade, which eighty years ago was 
strengthening the nation more rapidly than ever before, was 
perhaps the main reason why the demand for higher wages 
by overworked and underfed people was then so unfeelingly 
disregarded by the public. The same cry, as to effect on trade, 
was raised all through the nineteenth century when factory 
laws were passed, shortening the work day of women and chil- 
dren, or when concessions of any kind had to be granted to 
wage earners. Each time the same gruesome prophecies were 
made, that higher wages or fewer hours would raise cost of 
production, necessitate a rise of prices, diminish sales in for- 
eign lands, and drag the nation quickly into a decline. Until 
recent )'ears the result was always the opposite. Better pay 
and more healthful conditions increased the worker's energy 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 335 

and skill, which, with better machinery, enlarged the output, 
and brought the cost per tmit of product lower and lower/ 

Not to Accept Low Wages for the Country's Sake, a set- 
tled principle of unionism, has therefore been to the country a 
source of inestimable benefit. As a rule in business, to do 
one's best for himself is also to do one's best for his country. 
Excepting perhaps specially needed men of talent, this is even 
true when one emigrates to another land. Those left behind 
are then less crowded, and need not work so far out on the 
margin of poor land or poor mines. In a colony the outgoer 
builds up an addition to his home nation, while in a foreign 
land he adds to his home nation's influence and opportunities 
for trade. The right to emigrate has been freely acknowledged 
in modern times, excepting some limitation that Germany and 
Russia have deemed necessary for recruiting their armies. 
Readiness to stand idle, or to move, is the main element of 
strength in unionism. When a union does not shut men out 
of its trade, it is usually justified in getting wages as high as it 
can. Its demand for excessive pay will then be checked by in- 
flow of new men, by the leaving of its own men idle through de- 
crease of sales, or by the employer's closing of his factory 
before rising labor cost of his product shuts him out from his 
foreign markets. Perhaps the occasional driving, by demands 
for higher wages, of an industry from England to the lower 
wages of Germany, is a necessary cost to unionists of finding 
the line at which rise of wages must stop.^ After such an 

^How it is that High Wages Lower Cost of Product. As a rule, the 
higher the wages the lower the cost per yard or ton of product. Starting 
with bare support, additional pay, when rightly used, first strengthens the 
body, and then indefinitely upward, giving a better living, improves the 
intelligence, capability, and general character. But the necessity on the 
worker of earning higher pay, in order to retain it (of earning it better 
than low pay is earned by others), is probably the main reason for the 
desired result of falling cost of production, though ranking closely with it is 
the employer's effort to offset high wages by getting promptly the best 
machinery, and by following vigorously the best methods. However high 
the pay, except perhaps in old, unchanging communities, and except in work 
for a government body, the desired quality of product is obtained most 
cheaply, or in time lower-priced men would be found. 

'^Driving Abroad Those Industries Unable to Pay Living Wages. 
The manufacture of bottles, and several other British industries, are said to 



33^ Getting a Living. 

unfortunate experience to one union, other unions would en- 
courage, not oppose, use of product-cheapening machinery and 
of expeditious methods. In taking in wages all above neces- 
sary profits, the British cotton workers judge accurately what 
wages the export trade against foreign competition will bear, 
and never close by their demands a factory that is properly 
managed and equipped. American tin-plate w^orkers agreed in 
1902 to a slight reduction of wages, in order that the Standard 
Oil Company's large contract for making cans might not be 
driven to the Welsh. 

A Minimum Wage Fixed by Law, among other radical 
concessions to the working classes, has been demanded in Great 
Britain by a growing party of men of socialistic ideas, which 
first became prominent in the spread of unionism to unskilled 
workers after the London dockers' strike of 1889. This move- 
have been driven by unionists to the Germans, who now supply the British 
demand. (A'^. A. Revieiv, Aug. 1901.) A number of British manufacturers 
also have from time to time built factories on the Continent, but more for 
the sake of avoiding the high Continental tariffs than to obtain cheaper labor. 
Firms having factories both in England and in France have found the Brit- 
ish labor cheaper at high wages than the French at low wages. A protec- 
tive tariff, instead of the present free trade, would hold industries in Britain, 
but only by means of high prices falling on consumers as a tax. When by 
a change workers are able justly to get higher wages than an industry can 
bear, it is their personal duty to get them, letting the industry go abroad. 
It would be well for England if such sweated trades were driven away as 
better machinery and management could not hold under living wages and 
living hours. A nation wants no trade at the expense of its people's life. 
When in opposition to the earlier British factory laws it was said the 
wheels of industry would stop, the answer was to let them stop if they 
could run only by grinding out the lives of children. Before it becomes 
necessary for some thus to perish in order that others may prosper, the 
earth's resources will be utilized infinitely more closely than has been the 
case yet. Inflow of cheap goods from an industry driven abroad will never 
harm a country. Bargains are thus obtained, paid for by exporting home 
goods yielding higher wages and higher profits. Falling of the general 
level of prices at home, making home goods cheaper and threatening dull 
times, soon stops export of gold to pay for foreign goods. In the end they 
are paid for with home goods. It is a fact to rejoice over, not to regret — as 
some are led to do by the doctrine of tariff protection — that American wages 
are too high to leave any profit in growing tea. We can leave tea grow- 
ing, with many other kinds of poor business, to foreigners who have nothing 
better to do. Besides, we must receive goods of some kind from them if 
they are to be able to buy the goods produced more profitably by us. 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 337 

ment has also influenced the old established non-socialistic 
unions to lay added stress on the idea of a living wage, a decent 
support, as every worker's right, regardless of prices. The 
results attained so far in Great Britain, besides the admission 
of many employers that wages cannot follow falling prices 
very far, include a general practice by government bodies of 
paying wages higher than would be necessary for getting effi- 
cient men, and an agitation that promises soon to secure gov- 
ernment pensions or some other systematic relief for the aged 
poor. 

Experiments in Australasia. In New Zealand, under the 
compulsory arbitration law of 1894, the arbitration court has 
habitually fixed and enforced such wages as it deemed just. 
New South Wales has gone somewhat further with a similar 
law enacted in 1901, perhaps the most radical act of modern 
times, and Western Australia also has followed New Zealand's 
example. Victoria's law of 1896, empowering a city board to 
determine the number of apprentices, and to fix minimum 
wages, in baking, clothing manufacture, and several other 
trades deemed like these to be sweated, has not been exten- 
sively applied. South Australia's law of about the sanie time, 
providing for some compulsion in fixing wages by arbitration, 
has been a dead letter. These are the only countries, it seems, 
since the practice fell into disuse in Europe in the eighteenth 
century, that have attempted to fix the wages to be paid by a 
private employer. Trade unionists in America have been 
active and successful in inducing the nation, the states, and the 
cities to pay at least the full union wages in public work, and 
to fix the day in such work at eight hours ; but fearing inability 
to meet capitalists on equal terms before the courts, American 
unionists have opposed compulsory arbitration and its means 
of fixing a minimum wage by law. Throughout the world the 
socialistic tendency of labor unions leads many of them to 
demand, or hope for, laws prescribing a short day and a min- 
imum wage. 

On Whom Would the Burden of Extra Pay Fall? Defer- 
ring to another chapter a discussion of compulsory arbitration, 
it can be asserted with confidence that in any civilized country 
the placing of private wages by law, apart from where they 



338 Getting a Living. 

^vould otherwise stand, would bring bad net results. First, 
those unable to earn the prescribed pay would get no work at 
all, so long as others were to be had. The New Zealand court's 
permission of old men to take less is a confession that to sell 
labor, or anything else, the price must be regulated by the 
buyer's estimate of value, and by varying supply and varying 
demand — as it would be regulated among intelligent people 
without any wage law. Second, if not enough workers were at 
hand whose product value would admit of the wage rate set, 
production would drop to the point to which sales were dimin- 
ished by addition of the extra pay to the price. Persons buying 
the commodity would be taxed the extra price and that portion 
of the commodity they went without ; the support of the men 
left unemployed would fall on the public as a tax in charity, 
so far as public work provided for them was done at a loss, 
and the country would have fewer supplies by the amount that 
production was diminished. Among people intelligent enough 
to go from one place or one occupation to another, raising the 
pay of one set of workers, above the level of the pay of others 
in their grade, would check industry by causing a shifting of 
population. Some British cities paying above the market rate 
for public labor, the excess being in effect a charity dole, have 
thus attracted men from other places, increasing the local 
trouble of unemployment and of charity. Wages could not 
be raised for all, because farmers on poor land, and many other 
small employers in minor industries, must pay low wages or 
none. Except in public employment, where, with taxation to 
fall back upon, value of product need not at first be considered 
if laborers can outvote property owners, thoughts of raising 
wages by law are connected with socialistic plans for turning 
industry over to the state. But then there would be only the 
annual product to divide, and this would soon dwindle away 
if there were a noticeable departure from the present practice 
of paying each according to the market value of the labor or 
commodity he offers. One person will not long do or offer 
more, when another gets as much for doing or offering less.^ 

'Living wages for the poorly paid, by increasing weakh and benefiting 
everybody, instead of by putting industry under a blight and bringing all to 
poverty, are discussed in Chapters XIV. and XXII. 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 339 

Australasia Will Solve the Problem of determining what 
can be done by law in directly fixing wages and shortening the 
work day for private employers. Wage workers, and believers 
in their plans, have there larger control of government than in 
any other land, and indications are that they will not stop until 
a number of socialistic proposals have been tried. By the arbi- 
tration court of New Zealand, high wages and a short work 
day are being compulsorily extended to all industries that can 
raise prices accordingly. Victoria and New South Wales are 
now following the same policy. 

The Outcome of All This can scarcely be viewed as doubt- 
ful. The state must stand prepared to support men whose 
labor is not worth the pay set by law. In time of business 
depression, when the voting influence of workers would not let 
wages follow prices downward as under competition, an army 
of men would be left idle. Supporting them with public work 
at seven shillings a day ($1.72), as New South Wales has 
done on a large scale, spending $981,000 in the one year 1895 
(her population is only 1,600,000), would soon begin to dry up 
rapidly the state's sources of revenue. Work thus provided 
on roads and parks to help people, who hold their jobs not by 
what they do but by what they need, is not rich in results. Not 
much is done, and that is of no immediate use. The more the 
men thus employed, the smaller would be the country's output 
of food and clothing, or of things to exchange for them, and 
scarcity would soon appear. Increased taxation, to pay for 
such labor, would encroach on capital used in production, and 
thus deepen the business depression, making smaller still the 
output of supplies and the amount of private employment. The 
state could not long borrow to support men producing no 
salable goods. If it gave up the seven shillings a day in cash, 
and put the men to work on land, the crop would be far of¥ and 
uncertain, and at best any labor thus provided for by the public 
would do well to yield board and shelter. Putting the men 
tmder strict task masters, and enforcing some system of slav- 
ery, might increase the crop, but not to the standard of the 
farmer paying m.arket wages. To such a dilemma socialism 
must lead — to compulsory work or to wholesale starvation. 
To. suspend the living wage law in dull times, in order that 



340 Getting a Living. 

production of useful things might continue, and deeper suffer- 
ing be averted, would be to abandon its purpose. In good 
times wages are high without the law. More pay for a man's 
labor than market value of its product determines will never 
be obtained by any scheme of law without taxing others un- 
justly, and diminishing their employment and supplies. Under 
such pay private employment ceases, while in public employ- 
ment the excess of pay is a thinly hidden charity dole, and has 
the usual effect of the latter toward blighting industry and 
character.^ 

'Australia's Woes Under Too Much Socialism. Unless fully account- 
ed for by the prolonged drought, the report from New South Wales in July, 
1902, that the government had borrowed £3,000,000 to carry on relief work 
for the unemployed, after the great prosperity of the last few years, indi- 
cates that the results outlined above are coming in due order. Recently 
many persons have been leaving Australia. The population there has been 
not a little demoralized, and brought toward helplessness by free spending 
of public loans. Several of the colonies are so deeply in debt that solvency 
is in doubt. {Public Opinion, Jan. 8, 1903.) Dr. H. T. Burgess of Aus- 
tralia says {The Independent, Oct. 23, 1902, p. 2527), that these colonies are 
the most overgoverned communities in the world, and are now trying to 
reduce the size of their legislatures by half. Heretofore, by the votes and 
influence of the horde of officials, proposals to reduce their number and their 
salaries have been defeated. In 1902 the Victoria state railways were 
menaced with a strike over wages by 10,000 employees, supported with a 
sympathetic strike of 9,000 others in the civil service. The strike was nar- 
rowly averted. In Australia's commendable effort to take their excessive 
power from the rich, she has gone to the other extreme and given it to the 
bureaucracy, making her last state worse than her first. "Chronic financial 
depression, extravagance, government deficits, and increased public debts 
have been features of the general situation in Australia." {P. S. Quarterly, 
Dec. 1902.) 

Effects of Victoria's Minimum Wage Law. The boards provided for 
in 1896, to fix compulsorily the wages, hours, and apprenticeship of six 
sweated industries, were authorized in 1900 in twenty-one other industries. 
The factory inspector enforces the orders of the boards. The act has 
stopped most of the sweating, but it is a question whether sweating has not 
given way to other conditions as bad. Many unable to earn the wage fixed 
have given up work altogether, or evade the law by taking less. "In the 
factories the w^age is paid, but a task system, necessitating a certain output, 
is often in vogue." There being no provision for the slow worker, he loses 
employment and suffers. Expectation of equal pay is natural under the 
socialistic ideas prevailing; excepting the slow would really be abandoning 
the purpose of the law. The aged and infirm, with whom the inspector 
kindly classes many, are given a permit to work for less than the legal wage, 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 341 

The Departure from the Supply and Demand Rats, under 
any law fixing wages, must be very slight. Close to that rate, 
w^iatever the law, the employer's payment will be held, by 

but employers are chary of hiring them, objecting to having the public know 
that they are paying less than the legal wage — another boomerang effect of 
unionism's too great insistence on maiptaining a full rate. Here, as in New 
Zealand, payment above market value of work done is an artificial tax on 
consumers in higher price. The coming inter-state free trade in Australia 
is regarded by Victorians with forebodings. Thoughtful people, including 
wage earners, are apprehensive for the future. {U. S. Labor Bulletin Nos. 
38 and 40. Re'v. of Rev. March, 1902, p. 350.) The inspector considers 
the results beneficial in apprenticeship, since, by reason of the increase of 
wages required by law each year, the employer sees that the apprentice 
learns, and the apprentice knows that he must learn, in order to earn the 
extra pay, or lose his position. But such help by law must make workers 
incapable of caring for themselves. In America the boy himself, and his 
parents, see that he has a chance to learn, and that he is properly paid each 
year, or he gets another position. Not often can a boy be held back in 
drudgery at low wages who could do better. The trouble is usually in the 
boy's unwillingness to take time to learn, being attracted to other positions 
less desirable in the end, but affording higher pay for the present. And 
only by teaching the sweated to earn more, or to go where their labor will 
bring more, can anything be done for their wages beyond mere charity 
assistance. (Chapter XXII.) 

The Darkest Hour Before Day. In May, 1903, the engineers of Vic- 
toria's state railways, being forbidden by the government to have their 
union affiliate with a central body which they were to obey, threatened to 
strike within a day if the order was not rescinded, and did so strike, par- 
alyzing business, and placing cities in danger of a shortage of food. But 
their action was deemed an attack on the state, a long premeditated revolt, 
and a special session of Parliament, heartily supported by the public, 
enacted at once a law making the leaving of railway work thereafter, with- 
out four days' notice, a crime punishable with a year's imprisonment. 
V^^ithin five days the engineers surrendered unconditionally, the state refus- 
ing to hear proposals of compromise. Other evidence that Australian dem- 
ocracy is not, as seemed probable, to prove a failure, is the election now of 
new men to office, with a change of policy from big loans and huge public 
works to resolute economy and less interference with liberty. New South 
Wales has increased her debt by $50,000,000 in three years, and Victoria is 
losing 16,000 people a year. The labor unionists are so opposed to adm.it- 
ting needed immigrants, to letting others live, that they are having trouble 
to live themselves. Yet Tom Mann, a noted English unionist, is hired in 
Victoria to agitate for a six-hour day and a Henry George tax on land. 
Dr. Fitchett of Australia says Victoria's wage boards are "hopelessly dis- 
credited;" that "it is proved that the legislation intended to serve the work- 
ing classes has seriously injured them." (Public Opinion, July 2, 1903.) 



342 Getting a Living. 

exacting faster work, or by suspending the less profitable parts 
of his production. When he hires, it is labor product he buys, 
and he takes only so much as will admit of a profit at the sell- 
ing price of his goods. New Zealand's laws providing that 
girls in factories must be paid at least four shillings a week, 
boys five shillings, and women at least sixpence an hour for 
overtime, are perhaps an allowable method of prohibiting work 
by persons too weak to earn the sum fixed, and to prevent 
taking advantage of persons unable to bargain. The weak are 
thus restricted to less exacting work in domestic and farm 
service. But they and their country would very probably fare 
better if in bargaining on wages they and their parents learned 
to protect themselves, leaving to the state the fixing of ages, 
hours, ventilation, etc. For any loss to the employer from 
the New Zealand law closing factories Saturday noon without 
deduction fromi pay of time workers, one can imagine how 
well the employer reimburses himself by taking that half day's 
pay, and more, from the weekly wage, or by doing less hiring, 
as indicated in chronic unemployment. Thus is his trouble 
from uncalled for laws charged up. 

The Fixing of Wages by Magistrates in Past Centuries, 
for which, to protect the weak from being imposed upon, there 
was then some reason in the ignorance and immobility of the 
working class, was evaded where it placed the rate above the 
natural level, and fell into disuse from preference by both par- 
ties to bargaining for themselves. Those prices of commodi- 
ties that were fixed successfully by custom and law in the 
Middle Ages were placed about where in a stagnant society 
they would have remained without the law. Evasion and 
going without sufficed for the few changes of demand. Aside 
from such functions as holding the unscrupulous to healthful 
conditions by means of mine and factory laws, and from adher- 
ing to justice and wisdom in all its activities, the only whole- 
some way in which the state can raise men's wages, it is suffi- 
ciently tiue to state repeatedly, is to teach them to produce 
something worth more, to bargain to better advantage, or to 
sell their labor where its price is higher. It is perhaps well for 
society everywhere that the Australian experiments are being 



Higher Wages from Higher Prices. 343 

made. They may not be carried far enough to cause large and 
permanent harm, and may have some effect to turn the hopes 
of wage workers away from the impossible, into a field of self- 
improvement capable of wonderful results.^ 

'Prices are Fixed by Law for Hackmen and street car companies when 
the license or franchise agreement is made with them, by which they are 
permitted to use the streets. Railroad companies also, when they enter the 
business, know that passenger rates are fixed by law and may be changed, 
and that various regulations may be made for public safety. To imposition 
of the latter regulations all kinds of business may be subjected. But to such, 
servants of the public as hackmen and railway companies, people are often 
unable to refuse an extortionate price if it were demanded. Laws fixing; 
price are therefore necessary here that would be tyrannous if applied to other 
occupations. Imposition of unjust rules on hackmen would be prevented by 
its effect to drive some from the business, or to make the service poor. 

It is fixed high pay secured without aid by constantly deserving it that 
gives the splendid results portrayed on page 298. Fixing the rate by law has 
opposite effects, as explained in this chapter, making workers dependent, 
and bringing ruin in many respects. (See chapter XV. for effects of high 
pay in public work, and chapter XIV. for effects of guaranteeing employ- 
ment.) 



CHAPTER XIII. 
HAVE WAGE WORKERS OBTAINED THEIR SHARE? 

In Some Cases They Have Not. That the working classes 
have not received their just share of the benefits of industrial 
progress is continually asserted by their writers and speakers. 
Such has undoubtedly been true in some cases. 

Where Higher Pay Would Have Lowered Cost. First, 
withholding of just dues from workers has taken place, or in 
reaching out for these dues they have failed to get them, in 
all cases where additional pay would have so encouraged them 
as to increase their product value by a larger amount. In such 
a case the worker, the employer, and society were all injured. 
All too may have been in fault. The employer may have exert- 
ed his superior power further than a good conscience would 
approve. The workers may not have done their best in show- 
ing that they deserved the increase, or in persisting in their 
demand, or in avoiding strike violence, with its injury to their 
cause. Public opinion may not have been sufficiently active in 
efforts to find out and support the right. There were many 
cases of this kind in England before 1850, and not a few of 
them have occurred in recent years in different lands. 

Where Cost Would Not Have Been Increased. Second, 
workers have failed to get their dues, and society has been 
injured, in those cases in which increase of pay would have 
increased work and product to an equal extent, not raising the 
product's cost, and in which the higher pay would not have 
been more than a reasonable step above the pay received by 
the same grade of skill and effort in other occupations. Work- 
ers in the latter would then have been encouraged to seek a 
similar raise, earning it in the same way when granted, and by 
reason of its moderate amount new men would not have been 
attracted into the trade to lower it, nor would its retention have 

(344) 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Share f 345 

involved their exclusion by means of union monopoly. By 
such steps a rise of wages begins and spreads, from city to 
city, and from trade to trade. 

Where Pay Was Held Below the Average. Third, work- 
ers have failed to get their just dues in all those cases in which, 
whether product was thereby cheapened or not, the wages were 
lower than the average received by the same grade of skill and 
effort in other occupations, and remained lower for a longer 
time than ought reasonably to have been required to raise 
them. If because of this lower pay, in such cases, the goods 
are cheapened in price, and the deficiency of pay is not so great 
as noticeably to aft"ect the health and progress of the workers, 
there may be no material injury to society; yet as a rule it will 
suffer a net loss from cheapening of goods in this way. The 
amount of the deficiency of pay would be more useful to so- 
ciety if devoted to elevating the living and capacity of the 
workers, than when falling in lowered prices to con- 
sumers. 

Where Workers Were Sweated. Fourth, the loss to so- 
ciety and to the workers is greatest when their pay is not only 
lower than they could earn in other occupations if they knew 
how to enter them, but is so low as to cause waste of health and 
of labor capacity. The amount taken from cost of product 
by means of such wages has been properly called the price of 
blood. And without thus bartering away human life the 
product could generally be made cheaper still. The connected 
lowering of vitality tends to make the product cost more money 
to the employer, saying nothing of the irreparable loss to the 
workers and to society, than it would cost under better pay. 
There is a similar waste of life and of labor power, and usually 
with increased money cost of product, when the work day is 
too long, and light and ventilation bad, or the danger unnec- 
essary. 

Who Deserves the Blame? As in the first class of cases, 
the blame in those described in the second and third para- 
graphs may rest in varying degrees on the employer, on the 
workers, and on society. In the last class of cases it mainly 
rests on society alone. The workers here are generally too 
weak to help themselves. The employer too may be bound 



34^ Getting a Living. 

by competition from others in the trade, and may not have 
sufficient influence to change its customs.^ 
Who Obtained What Was Kept From the Workers? 

There is httle basis in truth for the feehng that what ought to 
have been added to, wages has been retained by employers as 
profit. The harrowing picture so often drawn by sociahstic 
and labor writers, of hundreds toiling life away for a pittance 
that one rich man and his family may roll in luxury, is an 
untrue indictment of the present competitive order, except so- 
far as society has failed to do its best to remedy abuses, and to 
teach the workers to get the most from their earning powers. 
Under any other than a competitive order the workers, more 
than the abler or shrewder classes above them, would fare infi- 
nitely worse than they do now. There need be no hesitancy in 
repeating that under socialism society could not produce 
enough to keep the present population alive; and that the 
shrewd or strong, as- always in times of disorder, would have 
far greater opportunity than at present to prey on the weak. 
Profits are not now high. On the contrary, the complaint of 
the smaller employers and tradesmen is that profits have fallen 
too low to afford them a living, and for this reason they are, 
in many lines, fast dropping out of business. The majority of 
larger employers also, in the keen competition to render best 
service to the public in order to get trade, must be content with 
profit very low in rate — to be made large in the aggregate only 
by serving a wide circle of people. The workers certainly have 
gotten their share of the resultant cheapening of supplies. It 
is mainly in the goods bought by them that cheapening has 
taken pfece. To some extent the rich prefer expensiveness — a 
fact that dealers often heed, by placing on goods designed for 
them a rate of profit very high. And the capitalist's share in 
interest, partly by reason of modern safety, has fallen very 
low, as explained in Chapter TT. 

The Falling of Rates of Interest and Profit has come by 
increase of capital and growth of industry, both moving faster 
than increase of demand for them. In this matter, the rich, as a 
rule, have not been at fault. They have been turning more and 

'Remedies for the evils of these last cases will be discussed in Chapters 
XVIII. and XXII. 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Share? 347 

more away from the personal luxury of former times, and 
have been saving their incomes and using their energy to 
increase their wealth, but to lower their rates of interest and of 
profit, by multiplying society's capital and flow of supplies.^ 
Where neither competition to hire among employers, nor de- 
mand by workers, has raised wages, the increase of product has 
gone to workers and all others through lower prices. 

^The Rich Get Only Their Living. Their ownership of then- wealth does 
not make it belong any the less to society. All they get from it is what they 
consume during life — their board, clothes, and pleasures. The case is the 
same with their descendants. All besides what the rich personally cons'.mie 
goes to society, as truly as if the government owned everything, and is far 
more justly divided than would be possible under the rule of a bureaucracy 
of self-seeking officials. The capital of the rich in factories would not pro- 
duce so many goods if the people owned it, nor to get these goods would the 
people have so many products of their own to exchange. Under socialistic 
ownership of land and capital, the people of each village or township, as 
at present, would have for use and exchange only what they themselves pro- 
duced. As shown in Chapters I. and 11. , society could own land and busi- 
ness only by first taxing itself the amount of their invested value, and then 
by charging interest and rent as at present; while it would have to bear all 
risks, and under state officials, with no wide field for private gain in propor- 
tion to effort, production of abundant and improving supplies would be 
impossible. Private ownership secures such production to the utmost, re- 
lieves society of the risk of loss, throwing it on private owners, and develops 
in the only possible way the intelligence and character essential to civiliza- 
tion. 

The Rich Man is Society's Servant, as a manufacturer, and Its steward 
as a capitalist, whether he chooses to be or not; and generally he does best 
for it when he saves his money rather closely, putting it into better machin- 
ery, and when he seeks gain eagerly but honestly, getting more of it by 
giving the better values that increase sales and increase as much the benefit 
to the people. However, when the rich employer's business no longer needs 
his attention, having reached perfection, and being in the hands of able 
assistants, he avoids shortening life and losing character by sinking into 
luxury when he takes up, like Mr. Carnegie, the inestimable social service 
of placing before society the knowledge for lack of which so many of its 
ills come. Cut here, since the stocks and bonds given by Mr. Carnegie are 
those of steel works, the only addition to his stewardship is in giving his 
labor of thought and the bond income, which might otherwise be spent in 
luxury by heirs. The stock and bond principal would still be in society's 
service, however wastefully the income were spent. His thought is given 
extra only so far as it would otherwise be devoted to pleasure and not to 
manufacturing. 



348 Getting a Livin 



Conscious Injustice in Preventing Rise of Wages has prob- 
ably existed to a very small extent. The struggles of the 
English working class to rise, when their condition was at its 
worst, were met by the upper classes with a resistance that in 
the experience of the latter could scarcely have been otherwise. 
Few of the rich were sufficiently independent in intellect to be 
held responsible for the character of their inherited ideas. 
Even when employers combined to break up the earlier unions 
by law, they felt that workmen were doing wrong in organiz- 
ing ; and for paying starvation wages they were partly excused 
by a vicious poor low (such an arrangement in effect as social- 
ism demands), whose administrators stood ready to make up to 
any family insufficiency of support. In later times employers 
resisting unions have generally felt sincerely that their work- 
men were in the wrong, and the fair-minded public has often 
thought the same. 

The Fault of Each Class Has Been Balanced by Its Own 
Loss. This seems to be about the truth, as shown above, con- 
cerning the responsibility for the failure of the working class 
to gt\ their full share of the benefits of progress. Employers, 
for their part in keeping wages lower than they ought to have 
been, have suffered loss. The capable employer who pays the 
highest wages that can be earned, gets his product at lowest 
cost per unit, and attains highest success. For the failure of 
public opinion to do its part, society has lost, from the effect 
of low wages to hold back the progress of workers and of em- 
ployers, to retard thus the cheapening and improving of prod- 
uct, and hence to waste a portion of productive capacity. The 
loss of the workers is clear enough. They have been in fault 
so far as they have not done their best to lay hold on sound 
knowledge, nor to increase the net value of their work by 
avoiding waste of time and of material, nor to spend their 
wages wisely. Being responsible only for use of what intelli- 
gence and will power they have, their collective loss perhaps 
has overbalanced their fault. To that extent they have been 
victims of circumstances — of being born into conditions not 
more favorable to them. 

Whose Fault Has Been Greatest? Yet the wider knowl- 
edge of the employer often falls as far short of reaching his 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Share? 349 

inherited prejudices. Perhaps, in his higher task, he has done 
no worse in faihng to perceive and follow the wisest course of 
gaining most from workers by uplifting them, than they have 
done in their simpler task by failing to get good through not 
actively deserving it. Perhaps the proportion of employers 
dealing rightly with their help has been as large as the propor- 
tion of employees showing the diligence to be properly expect- 
ed. The smaller employers, doubtless the large majority of all 
in number, generally deserve all they get — practicing self-denial, 
working far more intensely than their hired help, and sweating 
the latter no oftener than being sweated by them. 

Could the Whole Experience Have Been Otherwise? 
Hence, so far as wage workers have not received their full 
share of the benefits of progress, the blame, it seems, must fall 
at last on nature. She has taught mankind nothing better than 
the slow method of progress that has been followed. While 
individuals in every age have blamably failed to perceive all 
that their light revealed, and to do all within the will power 
they had, thus holding themselves and society back from good 
within reach — it is still true that the whole matter of the com- 
mon people and their rights has been working itself out accord- 
ing to nature's plan. With the forces there were, though alter- 
able to a considerable extent by human effort, results materially 
different could not have been expected. Very few persons 
have been guilty of deliberately exploiting the workers, as the 
socialists and their followers have charged. Any of us at the 
same time, and with the same experience, would have done 
about the same as the typical employer or wage worker of the 
past. To harbor now bitter feelings over the matter causes 
further harm. From what has been suffered and learned, we 
have a light for the pathway of present and future progress. 
All advancement with humanity has come in the same way. 

The Main Fact for Wage Workers to Know at present is 
that a man's right to wages is fixed by the value his work adds 
to materials, less the rent, the interest, and the profit which in 
the present supply and demand of land, capital, and manage- 
ment people stand ready to pay. If all land belonged to the 
government, people would pay present rents to get their choice 
of. locations ; if it allotted land free, they would then pay rent 



350 Getting a Living. 

to one another. If the government owned all capital, and the 
people were not too dull, there would be the same payment of 
interest, either on direct loans from it, or on sub-loans to one 
another. Nature gave managing ability its command of profits 
by making it scarce and necessary. A business will not run 
itself, for the same reason perhaps that patient cultivation must 
be given to a crop. To know what to do is generally harder 
than doing it A government could change these conditions 
only by forcing managing ability to serve for less than full 
profit, though where forcing is done it is generally ability that 
does it. This forcing of ability would weaken its incentive, 
diminish the output of society's supplies, and bring poverty to 
all. As a public slave an employer will work no better than 
will a slave laborer. The employer insists on having all that 
his management will sell for, on the same principle, and with 
the same justice, that a imionist engineer on a railway demands 
and gets four times as much pay as a section hand. The entire 
system of human life is adjusted by nature to the principle of 
value received, fixed by demand of supply ; and even before 
exchange grew up, each man of the barbarous family received 
from its products in close proportion to the desirableness of the 
fighting or hunting he did. 

Wages Must Depend on the Value of the Worker's Own 
Output. Except so far as assisted by public education of 
various kinds, and by such laws as result in permanent benefit 
to society, every man not needing charity or special sympathy 
must hereafter, as at present, contrive for himself to get more 
for his labor — by demanding more through his union, by doing 
more or better work, or by going where the price of his labor is 
higher — to another employer, another place, or another trade. 
For low v/ages these are the only remedies. Where the value 
of a man's product will admit of only a dollar a day in wages, 
payment of more would be making him a gift of the excess, as 
everybody understands, and would be obviously undeserved 
when three-fourths of the earth's inhabitants get less than 
half of it. 

Charity Must go First Where Need is Greatest— to those 
who from sickness or other defect are unable to earn a small 
part of a dollar ; and from its effect to lessen effort, charity can 



Haz'e lVai:e Workers Obtained Their Share? 



351 



be rendered only where other reh'ef is impracticable. That the 
selling value of a product affording only a dollar a day in 
wages is as low as it is, may benefit a hundred poor consumers 
where it harms one poor producer, though this is no reason 
why the latter should not get all he can justly. Except by the 
slow method of introducing a commodity among new consum- 
ers, its value can be raised only by reducing the supply, and 
reducing accordingly the employment of those who make it 
and the enjoyment of those who consume it. And even if 
value rose from natural changes, the worker would have a 
right to more pay only so far as inflow of equal skill, receiving 
less in other trades, did not increase product and lower value 
to its old level, or did not by increasing supply of labor restore 
the old rate of wages. The right of one worker to higher 
wages is subject to the right of all other workers to come in 
and divide with him the chance of getting more. It is unjust 
to them, and to all consumers of his product, for him to receive 
more than they except so far as greater skill or effort raises the 
value of his service above theirs. Without monopolistic ex- 
clusion of apprentices and others, and among people knowing 
enough to go where they can earn most, differences in wages 
gravitate closely to differences in natural value of the service 
paid for. In the competition among employers to hire labor, 
and to lower prices to buyers, there are few cases in which a 
person's wages long remain too low in proportion to the selling 
value of his labor's product. It is mainly by lowering prices of 
goods that benefit to humanity comes. Such benefit reaches 
everybody. Rise of money wages comes to a few at a 
time. 

Society's Part in Regaining" the Profits of Monopoly. To 
improve opportunities and cheapen supplies, that every human 
creature may get the best living possible, society is now en- 
deavoring, more earnestly than ever before, to correct the evil 
or outgrown customs by which wealth is attained without ren- 
dering a just value for it. Perhaps the most important of these 
reforms just now in America is to withhold for the public, by 
lowering fares and improving service, by sale of franchise and 
by taxation, and eventually perhaps by public ownership to a 
large extent, — all net income above a fair profit in public 



352 Getting a Living. 

service monopolies, such as railroads, telegraphs, telephones, 
street cars, and gas works. 

Taxation of Land, Inheritances, and Incomes. Another 
needed reform, as set forth in Chapter L, is the assessment for 
taxation of all land in cities, whether occupied or not, at its full 
value. In this way, raising assessment as fast as the rise of 
value, society can take its share of the unearned increment 
arising from growth of population. The remainder of the 
increment will be no more than a just return to the owner of 
a vacant lot for carrying its value without annual return, and 
for bearing the risk of decline. A third reform is to tax the 
transmission of property by inheritance. This is necessary to 
prevent later generations from enjoying large incomes from 
society without rendering any service at all. The desirable- 
ness of wealth, and the motive for accumulating the capital 
that makes civilization, depend somewhat upon transmission to 
children ; but inheritance taxation can doubtless be carried far 
without weakening that incentive to the extent of public in- 
jury. A very desirable efifect of such taxation would be the 
use of wealth by many a father, while living, to educate and set 
up his children, and make them independent in caring for 
themselves, thus developing their minds and characters to the 
greatest usefulness, instead of injuring them and society, wast- 
ing their ability, by leaving a fortune for their support in idle- 
ness. If thus brought up in recognition of the disgrace there 
is in having no useful occupation, so many of them would not, 
as at present, prostitute their resources to the pursuit of sport, 
not as a healthful recreation, but as life's chief concern. Tax- 
ation of incomes also is coming to be an approved method of 
placing a share of the public burdens on ability not otherwise 
,to be specially taxed. It reaches effectively those of the salar- 
ied and professional class who receive good incomes but do not 
possess taxable property. The British income tax yielded 
$175,000,000 during 1901. None of the taxes mentioned above 
can be shifted on to others by being added to prices. 

Reform of Tariff, Corporation, and Patent Laws. A re- 
form to disentangle the most subtle web in which the public 
has ever been entrapped is a gradual readjustment of the tariff 
to the needs of revenue, that labor and capital may not be 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Share? 353 

wasted in producing things not naturally worth their cost in 
this country, the deficiency being made up by a contribution 
levied through the tariff on consumers. Another needed reform 
is a revision of corporation laws, that vast aggregations of 
capital and power may be held back from preying on the people 
through monopoly, and confined to their function of securing 
gain by improving service. Some changes in patent laws also 
are needed, that encouragement in invention may not give rise 
to monopoly trusts. Present progress is promising in most 
of these reforms. They are being rapidly introduced by the 
different American states. Decided advantage to the public 
may be expected from them, in cheapening services, and in 
relief from some of the present burdens of taxation. But they 
may change but slightly the aggregate conditions of getting a 
living. Each worker will still be under the necessity of accept- 
ing wages fixed by demand and supply of his labor product, 
and of changing that product, or his sale of it, if he would fare 
better. Delay in bringing about these reforms is not distinc- 
tively a withholding of dues from wage workers. Losses from 
delay fall on other classes as well. 

The Rich Have Been Growing* Richer, because with their 
capital and enterprise they have achieved wonderful things in 
the service of society. Princely rewards are not begrudged 
to the multitude of strenuous men who have conquered nature 
for man, with great railroads, ships, factories, and mines. It is 
rapid progress, desired by all, that has made rapid accumula- 
tion of private fortunes. When progress and change are 
checked, accumulation will be checked also. Without the 
system of large reward in profit, the world could not have the 
present rapid growth of capital, nor its increasing output of 
consumable supplies, in whose quantity and quality the utmost 
is attained because the capital is privately owned by men who 
get the full profit afforded by demand, but must bear all losses 
from their own mistakes. Society knows no other way of at- 
taining a comparable measure of welfare for all. If the state 
itself undertook to introduce the new inventions, and to carry 
out the unproved enterprises, those citizens desiring to help 
forward such movements, led only by disinterested regard for 
the .public welfare, would be few and feeble compared with 
23 



354 Getting a Living. 

those desiring- to utilize the movements for their own selfish 
gain, by selling the state materials at high prices, or by being 
hired by it at high wages. Private gain from harmful monop- 
oly should be withheld by the reforms outlined above, but not 
the great profits of men with ability for carrying on society's 
business. Such profits are earned with service great none the 
less. Payment to these in profits exceptionally high is balanced 
by service from the less capable employers at profits excep- 
tionally low, or not realized at all. Between the two extremes 
comes a fair average for all, which average the employers, 
and those who might enter their ranks, set for themselves by 
the readiness with which they take risks. In introducing the 
inventions and carrying out the enterprises of progress, cer- 
tainty of reward will never be the condition until men can look 
into the future as into the past, and see the end from the be- 
ginning. So far as the vast gains of the multi-millionaires 
have been secured at some social loss — as in street railway 
franchises obtained corruptly, or in stupendous trusts built up 
from unlawful favors in freight rates — the millionaires are not 
more to blame than the people themselves. Who would abuse 
the cows for getting into the corn when the gate is left wide 
open? The people will continue to suffer such loss, and will 
deserve it, until enough of them give up themselves the same 
kind of unscrupulous scrambling for special favors or ques- 
tionable gains, and seek personal advantage through honest 
discharge of their duties as citizens. The millionaires are no 
more ready to exploit the public than are those socialistic wage 
workers who in public employment force wages too high and 
output too low. 

The Poor Have Been Growing Richer Too, along with all 
above them, both in higher wages of money, and in the enjoy- 
ment of a better living from goods at lower prices. The poor 
might become richer for the moment by despoiling the rich 
of their goods ; but under the civilized exchange method of 
getting a living there is no way by which the poor can continue 
to prosper except by the present system of sharing (in higher 
wages, steadier employment, and lower prices) the business 
prosperity of the active classes above them. The needed re- 
forms outlined above would prevent the accumulation of for- 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Share? 355 

tunes abnormal in size, but in the growth of wealth the differ- 
ences between the acquisitive and others must long remain 
about the same as at present. If society is to have more goods 
and services to enjoy, the benefit to a man in gathering capital 
can now be but slightly changed, though the time will doubtless 
come when ability will turn more than at present from wealth 
getting to winning honors in real service to the public. The 
coming of this time can be brought about quickly if the voters, 
.especially the most numerous class of wage workers, will only 
elect to office the able patriots willing to serve, instead of choos- 
ing otherwise as at present with motives so closely related to 
direct personal advantage. 

The Notion of Poverty Growing Worse was derived from 
the socialists, who make present conditions appear as bad as 
possible, that favor may be gained for the scheme they have 
dreamed out for state ownership of all capital and of all busi- 
ness.^ Any person past middle life knows that this notion is 

^Socialistic Exaggeration with Mr. H. G. Wilshire sounds as if he were 
joking, to make his speech entertaining. He says: "Wages, being deter- 
mined by the unemployed man, always remain at the point which just gives 

the laborer a living To-day the mule gets the same quantity of 

oats he got fifty years ago, and the laborer gets the same quantity of food, 
regardless of the increased productivity of their labor." This is true of 
only the few whose pay is on the subsistence level, and the product of not 
many of them is worth more. To get the unemployed railway engineer 
who will suit takes $4 a day. 

"It is only the densest ethical ignorance that talks about a Christian busi- 
ness life, for business is now intrinsically evil; . . . there is no such thing 
as an ethical bargain, . . . there are no honest goods to buy or sell ; 
. . . the hideous industrial war . . , makes the industrial system seem 
like the triumph of hell and madness on the earth." "I can neither feed 
nor clothe my family, nor take any part in public affairs as a citizen, nor 
speak the truth as I conceive it, without being stained with the blood of 
my brothers and sisters," (Rev. G. D. Herron, in 1899. Quoted by Pea- 
body, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 306, 316.) 

It is easy to perceive that the views of the writer of the above quotation, 
a man of ability and of good motive, have lost their balance — that the specks 
are on his own glasses, not on the society he surveys. Not referring to Dr. 
Herron, but to people in general, nearly any one may say from experience 
that those who complain much of societ>''s selfishness are, though well mean- 
ing, unsafe to lend to or depend on; but that the ones to sell to and deal 
with are those who get all their own, including the so-called monopolists, 
wh.0 make fev/ complaints but do all they promise, having enough to do it 



356 Getting a Living, 

grossly untrue. He remembers that in his youth people had 
nothing like their present living, though they were doubtless 
more contented, following yet the slower methods of old times, 
and not having imbibed deeply the discontent that makes for 
progress. Contentment depends more on the mind and disposi- 
tion, than on the pantry and wardrobe. Discontent leading 
to honest effort is to be commended when not carried too far. 
The acme of contentment is that of well fed swine. With men 
this state is reached perhaps with the least awakened Negroes 
in the South, or with basking Asiatics who would not accept a 
better living if it required additional exertion. The unrest of 
desire for more of the good things of life becomes an evil when 
the heart is set on things beyond one's means of attainment, as 
any virtue becomes a vice when carried to extremes. As it is 
foolish and wrong for a homely person to long to be handsome, 
"^Vso it is for a dull person to long to be bright, or for a poor 
A^^H^f person to long for a grade of wealth beyond his reach. Doing 
one's best with the resources he has is duty, and this brings 
happiness as nearly complete in the lower walks of life as in 
the higher. If wrong conditions in society hold one down, he 
can only strive to remove them or escape from them. There 
will always be conditions far from ideal — to be patiently made 
the best of. Never was the public so ready as at present to 
make wrong conditions right. 

Wages Have Been Doubled. "The eleven-hour day [in 
factories] did not become general until well on toward 1865. 
The first real factory law [in America], that of Massachusetts, 
dates from 1866. M. Levasseur, after a searching comparison 
of all available statistics, concludes that money wages 'have 
risen very perceptibly, perhaps doubled, in the last fifty years,' 
and that real wages, in commodities consumed, have risen [in 
quantity] still more."^ From the work day of eleven to fifteen 

with, and to a deserving person are not unready to lend. As to honest sell- 
ing and buying, see note in next chapter on the higgling of the market. 

^No Need of Drifting Into Feudalism. The quotation above is taken 
from an article by W. J. Ghent in The Forum of August, 1901, in which he 
shows the groundlessness of the idea that American workingmen had in the 
past a golden age. Country laborers had enough food and shelter in quan- 
tity, but a living that was very coarse ; while skilled city workers in New 
York and Philadelphia, nearly every winter between 1830 and 1850, were 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Shai'e? 357 

hours a century ago — fourteen hours in Rhode Island woolen 
mills up to 1858 — wage earners in England and America now 
work but nine hours in the skilled trades generally, in many 
of them but eight, and in only a small fraction of them do 

brought down to need of charity. Earlier in the century there were periods 
when wage workers the country over, even on farms, barely escaped hunger, 
as portrayed in McMaster's history. Yet Mr. Ghent, as shown in his recent 
book "Our Benevolent Feudalism," does not depreciate, but rather magni- 
fies, the dangerous power pointed out by the socialists in private ownership 
of land and capital. The American people will sin under plenty of light 
if in any future to be here considered they permit themselves to drift into 
the power of the wealthy, exercised benevolently to avoid provoking resist- 
ance, and to fasten its hold more securely. Though eternal vigilance will 
always be the price of liberty, there surely has never been a time in his- 
tory when society's progress toward better things was more promising than 
at present. In England, where inherited wealth reached a power perhaps 
unequalled in any other land, the forces of reform are almost having their 
own way — in extending the power of trade unions, in enacting labor laws, 
in collecting income and inheritance taxes, and in putting municipal 
monopolies under public ownership. Progress in the same direction is be- 
coming nearly as rapid in America. 

The Poor Continue With Us Always. And in the living of the com- 
mon people, not only in America but also in England and in France, as Mr. 
Giffen and M. Levasseur have shown, wages in commodities consumed 
have doubled in the last sixty years, for all those now well above the bare 
subsistence level. The continuance of a class living on this level is not, 
as various kinds of socialists claim, a proof that the poor have not received 
their share. It will never be possible for this class to be lifted up by the 
mere rising of society, their own effort remaining unchanged. Too many 
would lie back to be carried up thus. Whatever the gi'owth of wealth, 
there will always be a way open to drop to the subsistence level, and the 
only way society can help these poorest, so that they will stay helped, is 
to teach and encourage them to provide better for themselves. On no Babel 
tower of progress, not even when it is designed by the genius of a 
Karl Marx or a Henry George, will people ever rise, or can they ever 
be lifted, without individual and social injury, above nature's law of 
necessity for labor. (Chapters XIV. and XXII.) In Great Britain those 
down on the subsistence level are fewer in number than they were eighty 
years ago, and are a much smaller percentage of the total population. In 
those days, with only half her present number of people, Great Britain's 
poor relief cost as much as it costs now. (G. Drage, "The Labor 
Problem.") W. A. Wyckoflr, after personal investigations in 1902, con- 
cluded that British prosperity was then more generally shared among the 
working class than at any time since the fifteenth century, when a golden 
age for workers was brought about through reduction of their number by 



35^ Getting a Living. 

they work longer than ten hours. And the progressive states 
and countries now aim to enact every law to favor the work- 
ing classes that will not bring upon them and society more 
harm than good. Instead of public neglect of wage workers, 
or of committing their welfare, in the old way, to the kindly 
customs of the community, there is now danger of making them 
by law a privileged class, and thus of retarding their splendid 
march upward into a higher realm of merit and attainment. 

If a Worker Now Produces Thirteen Times as Much as in 
1750, on an average for all industries,^ by using improved 
machinery, there is nothing strange or wrong in the fact that 
he cannot get now as good a living with one hour's work as his 
ancestor got then with thirteen hours. With from eight to ten 

the Black Death. In America, by reason of the crowding of immigrants 
into the sweated slums, such a gain as that of Great Britain has probably 
not taken place. 

^If Great Possessions Have Increased More in proportion than small 
possessions, it has been because the people, by their own fault, have left 
open too many ways to the vast gains of monopoly. But that great pos- 
sessions, considered as an aggregate class, have increased faster, is improb- 
able. Doubling and trebling of large fortunes occur among the very few, 
while in the growth of wealth among all below them doubling and treb- 
ling occur among millions, and many thousands of these pass up to the class 
of the very rich. Moreover, in a number of countries the rich have lost 
most of their power in government, while the poor, from having no such 
power at all, are fast becoming the ruling class. For Great Britain statistics 
prove that the rich have not risen in wealth faster. Mr. Leon Levi found 
from income tax records that between 1850 and 1880 incomes of from $750 
to $1,500 increased 5 times; $1,500 to $2,500, 3 times; $2,500 to $5,000, 2V2 
times; $50,000 to $250,000, from 312 to 910; $250,000 and over, from 26 to 
77. Incomes below $750 averaged $265 in 1850, against $415 in 1880 and 
180,000 persons rose in income to $750 or more, and thus passed into the 
income tax class. Population increased only 33 per cent. (U. S. Indus. 
Com. XV., 2d part, p. 10.) It is a rapid increase of taxable incomes in 
Germany, and the evident fact that in many industries, especially farming, 
the socialists are not to realize their hope of an inevitable swallowing of 
small by large concerns until all pass to one owner and employer, the state — 
that led the German leader Bernstein to abandon lately the socialism that 
seeks to destroy the present system of industry and build a new one to order, 
and led him to teach the reasonable socialism that seeks to improve in every 
wise way the society we have, and is glad this society is so good as it is and 
is improved so easily. 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their SJiaref 359 

hours' labor he does get a Hving at least three or four times 
as good, considering benefits in facilities for education and 
transportation ; and the remaining difference in product be- 

Statistics of Poverty show that in England and Wales the average num- 
ber of persons receiving poor relief, per 1,000 of population, was 62 in 1849, 
48 in 1863, 33.9 in 1873, 26.2 in 1887, 22 7 in 1892, 24.3 in 1895. (Webb.) 
The average life of men rose from 39 in 1850 to 41 in 1890. Before 1850 
the death rate rose and the marriage rate fell, with rise of price of wheat 
and bread. Now the death rate does not change thus, but marriages increase 
when business is good, as shown by exports. John Bright said that the free 
trade law of 1846, giving cheaper food, added millions of pounds to the 
weight of the British working class. They, especially the women and chil- 
dren, were benefited thus by factory laws. Workers getting a bare living 
were half of all workers in 1850, but only a fifth in 1890. A few are still 
as poor as in 1850, but on the average the poor are now twice as well off 
as they were then. (Drage.) 

Exact Figures of Wage Increase. Massachusetts carpenters in 1780 
received 52 cents a day, and shipbuilders 90 cents (C. D. Wright), the 
increase with the former, up to 1903, being at least fivefold, and perhaps 
fourfold after making allowance for change of prices and of value of money. 
From the books of a Massachusetts cotton mill Edward Atkinson found that 
from 1830 to 1884, the cloth made being the same, hours dropped from 13 
to 10, average wages per week from $2.62 for both sexes to $5 for women 
alone, price of cloth falling about half, and sanitary conditions in 1884 
being vastly better in mill and home. Fifty years ago $60 a month was the 
highest pay received by a railway engineer, against an average of about $ioo 
in 1903, up beyond $150 for many. By the Aldrich report of 1891 to the 
U. S. Senate, doubtless correct in the main, for every dollar in i860 in the 
average pay of a long list of occupations, the pay was 88c. in 1840 and 
$1.60 in 1890, while the cost of food, for every dollar in i860, was 96.6 
cents in 1840, 153.8 cents in 1870 (gold), and 104.6 cents in 1890 — cost of 
living as a whole being 96.2 cents in 1891 against every dollar in i860. To 
a worker using the same set of commodities real wages, between 1840 and 
1891, rose about 130 per cent. (Levasseur, 412.) The Belgian workman in 
1891 consumed three times as much meat as in 1853, and 1^/2 times as much 
other food. (Levasseur.) By very careful computations of the U. S. Labor 
Department, the gold wages of 25 trades, for every dollar in 1891, were 94 
cents in 1872, 85.65 cents in 1876, 97.83 in 1884, 97.88 in 1895, 98.79 in 
1898, 103.43 ir* 1900 (no doubt not less than ro6 in 1903). Average price 
in gold, for the same quantity of each of a long list of commodities, was 
121.4 in 1872, 108.7 iri 1876, 102.6 in 1884, 94.4 in 1891, 79 in 1898, and 
90 in 1900. By Sauerbeck's index number the same quantity of each of 45 
commodities in England cost 74.6 in 1848-50, 91.5 in 1859-61, 104.3 in 1871- 
75, 73.6 in 1889-91, 62.0 in 1896, 67.3 in 1899, 78.6 in 1900. {U. S. Labor 
Bulletin No. 39. See also the notes on wages in Chapters XVL and XVIL) 



360 ' Getting a Living. 

tween the two periods, is fully accounted for in the accumula- 
tion of capital, and in the necessary costs of experience. A 
problem practically the same can be found in the cases of indi- 
viduals on every side.' Many a man who has suffered no special 

^Ernest Howard Crosby, in "Labor and Capital," Putnam, 1902. 
Wages $435, and Worker's Product $2,428. In support of the claim 
that wage workers do not now receive a fair share of what they produce, 
Mr. Crosby refers to the 1880 census figures of $347 for average wages in 
manufacturing against a yearly product for each worker of $1965. The 
fallacious conclusion that all the difference fell to the employer was so 
widely published in newspapers that in 1896 C. D. Wright, in Labor Bul- 
letin No. 3, explained that the large balance left above wages included cost 
of materials and all other expenses — the value of materials, 55 per cent of 
total product in 1890, being mainly due to the wage cost of producing them. 
By the census of 1900 average wages in manufacturing were $435. Aver- 
age product per worker was — including materials, $2,428 ; excluding ma- 
terials, $1,060. Of this $1,060 the $435 is 41 per cent. By taking from the 
total product 6 per cent on the capital, and $1,000 as salary for each pro- 
prietor and firm member, together with the wages, the materials, and the 
miscellaneous expenses, there is left a balance of $1,034,000,311 — the total 
product being $13,091,876,790, and the total wages being $2,339,923,615. 

This Difference of a Billion seems small enough in view of necessary 
inaccuracy as to allowances for depreciation, as to interest on excess of debts 
payable over debts receivable, etc. Besides, an average of 6 per cent is 
probably much too low for the total of interest and profit (page 52) in 
businesses good and bad. But whatever the census figures, it may be de- 
pended upon that the competition of employers — raising wages to get men, 
and lowering prices to sell goods — reduces their profit to the lowest point 
that will keep the marginal employer in business. Very few lines of busi- 
ness are monopolized. The others are open to any capable person who 
thinks employers are getting too much. A more accurate inquiry into this 
question was that of Massachusetts in 1900, which showed that of the value 
of product, after deducting cost of materials, there was paid in wages 57.07 
per cent in the carpet industry, 56.98 with shoes, 56.38 with cotton, and 41.96 
with paper. Average product per $1,000 of capital was $1,805 with shoes, 
$461 with carpet, $458 with cotton goods, and $445 with paper. Product 
per employee, in each of these cases respectively, v/as $813.36, $654.76, 
$640.57, $1,011.14. In all these computations cost of materials was not 
included. Average yearly earnings in wages per worker were $463.44 with 
shoes, $373.66 with carpet, $361.17 with cotton goods, $424.31 with paper, 
and $554.19 with machinery. The cotton worker's wages, $361.17, taken 
from $640.57, the value his labor added to materials, leaves $279.40 of that 
value as the employer's share for interest, profit, and all expenses except 
wages and materials. (£7. S. Labor Bulletin, No. 43.) In Massachusetts 



Have Wage Workers Obtained Their Share? 361 

injustice that he knows of works harder at forty under an 
income of $4,000 than he worked at twenty under an income of 
$300, and while he consumes much more weaUh, his enjoyment 
of Hfe is probably less. Though all his increase of income }ear 
by year fell to him alone — not being divided up by changes of 
value and price as society's product must be — he sees that 
the balance above personal consumption is plainly accounted 
for in his house and other property and in the various costs and 
losses that were to be expected in his experience. In the same 
way society has gathered its stupendous equipment of houses, 
factories, railroads, and ships, its wonderful industrial knowl- 
edgfe, and its capability of every kind for successful living. Are 
not its achievements since 1750 great enough? Who now will 
claim that he, for himself or for society, would have done better, 
under the same conditions and experiences, than any one of 
creditable record in this period's long roll of inventors, captains 
of industry, statesmen, reformers, and honest citizens of every 
station ? 

In the Righting of Wrongs— a task that mankind has 
always been struggling with and will never complete — those 
who are clamorous for change, asserting that the present order 
of society is all bad, need to take heed that by their radicalism 
they do not obstruct real reform more than do the comfortable 
classes who assert that the present order is all good; while the 
latter need just as much to take heed that by their unreasoning 
opposition to trade unions and to' labor laws they do not goad 
the working classes to turn their political power into ruinous 
socialistic excesses. Perhaps the capitalistic class err no 
further in depending on religiousness instead of righteousness 
than many writers for the working class err by permitting 
sympathy to displace sense. In the light of the experience 
different countries have had with measures of reform, that 
spirit of reasonableness which each side ought easily to reach 
under present enlightenment will bring about very soon a 

cotton mills, of the value added to raw material, 44 per cent in 1880 fell to 
wage workers, leaving 56 per cent for managers and owners; but in 1900 
wages took 57.2 per cent, and in 1896, under prices and profits very low, 
wa^es took 79.07 per cent. {Outlook, May 31, 1903.) 



362 Getting a Living. 

marked change for the better in society's conditions. No 
human ingenuity can construct society anew, but there is now 
enough 'wisdom and honest purpose among the people to carry 
the society we have much farther toward perfection. The so- 
ciahsm necessary in the reforms required, such as pubUc owner- 
ship or control of various monopolies, will be sufficient, it is to 
be hoped, to prevent the carrying of socialistic agitation to 
destructive lengths. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE FOR WAGE WORKERS. 

An Increasing Share of an Increasing Product. If higher 
wages cannot be obtained by forcing a rise of prices, owing to 
consequent diminution of sales and slackening of employment, 
from what sources then can wage workers hope for an improve- 
ment of their condition? Besides their own rise in efficiency 
and in bargaining capacity, and besides the benefits to be con- 
ferred by the state in enacting educational and factory laws, 
and in withholding monopoly profits for the public, great 
promise for human betterment has been asserted by some 
writers in the idea that with the increase of capital and in the 
progress of industry, through improved machinery and better 
methods, wage workers obtain "a constantly increasing share 
of a constantly increasing product."^ This thought, touched 
upon in Chapter VI., is that as increase of capital brings lower 
rates of interest, while increase of industry brings lower rates 
of profit and greater demand for labor, the large balance of the 
increased product falls to the workers in higher wages, which 
are less definitely fixed by supply and demand than are the 
three other shares, and hence leave the workers the most room 
for bargaining and getting a residue. Increase of the worker's 
income by this process has come about to a considerable extent. 
But only a part of the balance of increase of product has gone 
directly to raise wages for the workers directly concerned. 
]\Iost of it has gone to benefit the general public in lower 
prices, brought about by competition among producers in the 

^This was one of Bastiat's "economic harmonies," first appearing in his 
book of that title, published about fifty years ago. The doctrine is discussed 
at length and approved by Edward Atkinson in his "Distribution of Prod- 
ucts," 1884. 

How Far Workers are Heally Gaining Faster Than Capitalists. 
Bastiat's theory, though discredited by many, is substantially true as to the 

{363) 



364 Getting a Living. 

effort of each to increase his sales. In many cases more of it 
could undoubtedly have been added to wages by well organized 
unions, promptly making reasonable demands, and raising their 

wage earning class as a whole, which is far better for society than if it were 
true of the particular industry in which improvement takes place. Though 
in this industry wages rise but little, or even fall, as when skilled men are 
displaced by unskilled machine tenders, the latter rise to better positions and 
better wages, besides the cheapening of products — generally those used by 
the many — and the consequent rise for all of wages or income in commodi- 
ties consumed. As wage earners are a large majority of the people, they 
get thus most of the residue left by falling interest and falling profits. It 
is just this effect of machinery to take away the monopoly advantage of the 
skilled (page 282), despite their complaints and the socialistic outcry, that 
is most beneficent; since for all workers except the few skilled men directly 
involved it multiplies occupations and raises wages. In this raising of 
wages for the many, with the lowering of prices to all, it is true that the 
workers are gaining in income faster than the capitalists, excepting so far 
as the latter, even with interest and profits falling, are put forward by 
growing accumulations, spreading business, and rising rent. Ordinary rent 
sinks in importance when industry grows faster than population, besides the 
accompanying rise of wages ; while the undue advantage of the rich from 
vast accumulations, and from monopolies in manufacturing, in mines, rail- 
roads, etc., can be withheld for the people whenever they become sufficiently 
honest and capable to effectively tax, regulate, and own (page 352). One 
of the costs of progress is that it complicates and increases the burden of 
preserving rights and liberties. Effectually indeed has nature made this 
world a place of action, not of rest. 

Capital Increases More Than Twice as Fast as the population in Great 
Britain was the conclusion twenty years ago of Mr. Giffen, a very able and 
careful statistician. He said: "In the last fifty years the income from capital 
has at least no more than kept pace with the increase of capital itself. The 
real wages of the working class appear to have doubled. It would not be 
far short of the mark to say that almost the whole of the great material 
improvement of the last fifty years has gone to the masses." In America 
the improvement has been still greater, inflow of 20,000,000 immigrants 
being overbalanced by opening of new land, and by marvelous growth of 
capital and enterprise. It does not seem that Mill and the older economists 
expected too much from growth of capital and knowledge, in putting labor 
at a premium and giving all a chance for some leisure life. It was not to 
be supposed that nature would thrust benefits on those who failed to do their 
part, such as the sweated workers in cities. Capital in machinery and land 
improvement to the value of $100,000 per man would make labor a lordl)^ 
director of forces. Yet something like this is the economic goal if capital 
increases faster than population. Plenty of capital makes it pay to hire dull 
men, while raising wages all up the line, but plenty of labor makes it pay 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 365 

members in efficiency above others who might have taken their 
places. The loss of the public from a smaller fall in prices 
might have been more than balanced by prevention of discon- 
tent among wage workers, by increase of their buying ability, 
and by elevation of their standard of life and citizenship. Be- 
sides, the work by which one secures and holds high wages is 
usually so much greater in quantity, or better in quality, than 
the work of the poorly paid, that its wage cost is positively 
lower, aside from the indirect public benefits of his elevation. 
Economists have long taught, especially Walker, that assertion 
by wage earners of their rightful claims is best even for em- 
ployers, and that by wnse unionism the workers of the nine- 
teenth century could have obtained more than they did obtain. 
Demand Must be Made Quickly, Before Price Falls. Un- 
questionably there is great promise for wage workers in this 

to use poor tools. Extra profit is held by the employer just long enough to 
induce him to improve. It soon passes to labor, in higher wages and lower 
prices, but by that time he has improved again. The first improvements 
were sudden, and brought great hardship to hand workers displaced; but 
improvement now is steady, and hardships and crises grow milder. (J. B. 
Clark, "Distribution of Wealth.") 

A Force for Settling the Labor Problem. In i8io in England, under 
monopoly profit and rent to the rich, with bare subsistence, no education, 
and no votes for the poor, it seemed true, as claimed later by socialists, that 
the rich were to get richer and the poor poorer. But there was a saving 
condition in the fact that to work efficiently men had to be supported well, 
and be elevated intellectually and morally, which elevation, started by their 
own unaided effort, enabled them to get, by unionism and by going from 
place to place, the full value of their labor, and to get political power and 
needed laws. Another saving condition was that increase of capital and 
product so raised wages and lowered prices, besides lowering interest and 
profit, that the worker's living increased largely, and employers in each 
trade desired the workers in all other trades to be elevated for the sake of 
the market they afforded. So the huge machinery and great corporations 
of to-day, instead of proving the socialistic claim that size will increase 
until there is but one employer, the state, are in their wonderful efficiency of 
production a guarantee of further fall of profit and interest and rise of 
wages, and have in themselves the settlement of the labor problem, if the 
workers do their part in bargaining and voting, and do not give way to 
vagaries or supinely fall under feudalism. It was to be expected that such 
mighty forces for progress and happiness would be dangerous. (The main 
idea in this paragraph is taken from Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, P. S. Quar- 
terly,- 1^2, p. 748.) 



366 Getting a Living. 

tendency of progress to lower rates of interest and of profit. 
But they themselves must secure the benefit when the oppor- 
tunity comes. They can move quickly to secure by increased 
pay, or in a shorter day,^ a share of the product increase, due 

^Printers Did This Successfully when type-setting machines on daily 
papers came into use — 1890-95. Piece work then gave way to time work, 
but at higher pay on machines than was received for occasional time work 
before, and this for a shorter day. The best men were assigned to ma- 
chines, and some of the others were dispensed with, though before 1900 as 
many were employed as before. There is error in the idea (Indus. Com. 
XIX. 826) that the wise union policy here followed — of cooperating with 
the employers in the use of the new machines instead of vainly opposing 
the change — was what prevented the employment for the machines of cheap 
men, as in the case of the British hand weavers seventy years ago. While 
there was doubtless an effort to avoid trouble with the printers' union, the 
main reason for the higher pay was that the machine work was 'worth it, 
requiring men specially expert; and a reason for the shorter day was that 
the work was exhausting, requiring great concentration of attention. If the 
work were really suitable for cheap men, to award it to highly paid men, 
any further than to avoid displacing them with harsh suddenness, would be 
to charitably pension them and keep them where they did not belong, while 
shutting out more needy men that were entitled to it for the solid reason of 
rendering best value in proportion to pay. Lowering the pay of the skilled 
men to its market value on machine work, and raising from its previous 
level the pay of lower grade men under new demand, would seem to be 
the right and natural procedure in such a case. 

The Passing of Work from the Skilled to the Unskilled, which was 
shown above to be one of the principal means by which the general well- 
being is raised, is treated as a serious evil, it is strange to say, in Mr. John 
Martin's otherwise excellent article in Political Science Quarterly^ Sept. 1902. 
Wages in Illinois coal mines worked by hand average from $2.37 to $3 a 
day, but average only $1.97 in mines using machines, the skilled men being 
70 per cent in the former but only 10 per cent in the latter. But what could 
benefit more consumers than lower prices for coal, or more workers than 
new work for the unskilled, among whom unemployment is worst? Yet it 
was well that the union raised wages for those skilled men retained that 
were wanted. Those whom machinery crowds out of a skilled trade, being 
the least efficient, have a doubtful right to a place in it anyhow. In an- 
other trade they may really belong, while at the most, in having to enter a 
trade less skilled they do not drop far. In cotton factories women learning 
ring spinning in a few weeks are displacing at half their pay skilled men 
operating mules. But what else besides work will raise women's wages, 
and by what class is new employment so badly needed? 

The Fall of Weavers' Wages is a Social Benefit in the same way, so 
far as brought about by increase of work and pay to cheaper people em- 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 367 

to improved machinery or processes, before the larger supply 
has brought down the price and the profit, though it is by the 
lower price that all other workers are benefited as consumers. 

ployed. Mr. Martin sees evil In the fact that the $7.50 a day of glass 
blowers was lowered to $5 by a machine with which two cheaper men now 
produce twelve times what three did before. But surely there is little call 
for sympathy for a few hundred men's loss of a monopoly position at $7.50 
a day when glass fruit jars have dropped to 5c. each for all mankind. Men 
at such pay, of all workers, ought to be best able to foresee and prepare for 
industrial changes. The so-called degradation of skilled wood-workers is 
not in their displacement by the mere machine tender making cheap doors, 
but is in a charitable claim for the work needier men have taken because of 
rendering better value. The tendency of unionism and socialism to favor 
the skilled men of privilege, despite the emphasis on solidarity of class, and 
the dislike for the privileged rich, seems to be overlooked by Mr. Brooks, 
when he writes in his new book of the benefits of machinery as passing to 
employers and consumers, making no mention of benefits to the unskilled 
in more work and better pay. By the change the skilled are less reduced 
and enslaved, as mere cogs in a wheel, than the more numerous unskilled 
are elevated and liberated, the result being a vastly greater serving of men 
by machinery, and in the short run too, than would come if the skilled had 
their way. The view countenanced by Mr. Brooks cannot be emphasized 
without largely justifying the one-sided idea of many people that the term 
"labor" denotes only a class of unionists clamoring for privileges, and self- 
ishly utilizing the tenfold larger mass of needier people by unionizing them 
when necessary to avoid their competition, by putting their woes forward in 
appeals for sympathy for unionists not having such woes of their own, and 
by turning upon them the shock from monopoly in exclusion of scabs and 
apprentices, and in rise of prices. The better living of the girls making 
cigars with machines is ignored in the question of the unionist cigar maker 
who said to M. G. Cunniif, "Can't you see a deadly force squeezing smaller 
the margin of comfort in the living of American labor?" 

The Considerateness Due to Skilled Men, when new machinery renders 
their skill less valuable, is similar to that shown when genteel people that 
have lost their wealth are waited on as others are not who in various ways 
may really be more deserving. Assigning the new machines to the skilled 
men at wages not lo^vered, so far as their pay can be earned, while finding 
for them other good positions and doing nothing harshly, may be for the 
employer, in avoiding hard feelings, the procedure most profitable as well 
as most humane. Where time would be required for the cheaper men to 
learn, a forcing by strike among the skilled of an assignment of the ma- 
chines to themselves, at wages not lowered, would simply be taking proper 
advantage of opportunity, as is done in any strike, and hence for a time 
would involve no pensioning. The strike of New England shoe lasters a 
few years ago seems to have rested on such a basis. But unless the skilled 



368 Getting a Living. 

Wages raised very high are not unjust, either to consumers of 
the article produced, or to other workers earning less, so long 
as entrance of new men to the trade is not artificially prevented 
by some form of union monopoly, which fortunately is not 
usually possible at the present day. The increase of efficiency 
that holds the high wages gives a full return in enlarged value 
of product. 

Unionism and the Rate of Interest. Upon the rate of 
interest, which at any time is dependent upon the world's 
demand and supply of capital, the action of a body of work- 
ingmen can have little effect. Their best attitude toward it, so 
far as their clear rights will permit, is to cooperate with capital- 
ists in a friendly way. This tends to lower interest, and to add 
to employment, by increasing supply of capital, by preventing 
losses, and by promoting safety of investment. The necessary 

men learn to earn their high pay with the machines as well as cheaper men 
could earn low pay, the skilled must eventually take less, or the business 
will pass to new shops not burdened with caring for men of an old force; 
though by threatening labor trouble skilled employees of a monopoly may 
force it to pension them permanently, as the New York elevated railroad 
will do with its enginemen, so far as their work as motormen is not really 
better than that of motormen with surface lines paying less. {N. Y. Labor 
Bulletin, Sept. 1902.) 

Retaining the Skilled at Pay Far Above Market Rates. In 1902, in 
changingfromsteamtoelectricity, the company proposed to retain engineers as 
motormen at their old rate of $3.50 for nine hours, though surface motormen 
received only $2.40 for ten hours, but proposed to add the extra hour. The 
brotherhoods of engineers and of firemen opposed adding the hour, and by 
imminence of a strike gained their demand, with full pay as motormen for 
men promoted from firing at $2 a day. The difference in grade of men and 
in work may make service on the elevated road worth the difference in 
wages, but cases might arise in which it would pay such a monopoly to buy 
off by granting an unjust demand, to avoid stopping traffic, and to avoid 
endangering its franchise and its great profits. In referring to retention of 
skilled men at full pay as a matter of great ethical importance, and to the 
employer's duty, in adopting machinery, to make the loss to his men the 
least, it seems to be overlooked by practically all wricers on the subject that 
between employer and employees, as between members of a firm, a just 
partnership requires each to earn all he gets (page 84), and that sound 
ethics (in view of the unskilled and of society) require the employer not to 
do much buying off or pensioning (page 250). (See notes in next chapter 
on the worker's right to his position.) 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 369 

rate of profit also, which the marginal employer must get to 
remain in a business, depends upon the world's opportunities 
for production, and upon the readiness of employers to take 
advantage of them. After a union of workingmen have forced 
up wages until only this necessary rate of profit is left, they can 
have but little further effect upon it. They might lower it a 
little by being specially reliable and reasonable, thus reducing 
their employer's trouble and risk, or they might raise it by 
being unreliable and turbulent. But in the usual absence of 
special tendency either way in this respect the raising of wages, 
aside from occasional times of exceptional rise of price in a 
single industry, depends upon new demand for labor in other 
trades, absorbing the unemployed and enlarging markets, or it 
requires that the workers' product be increased, either by devel- 
opment of their own personal capacity, or by the employer's 
introduction of improved machinery ; and in the latter case 
their skill must be raised to place them above others earning 
less who might surmount the difficulties of entering the trade. 
Increase of Labor Demand from Production of New 
Things. Development of new wants, or production of new 
things, absorbing a portion of the labor supply, may raise wages 
where amount of product would make them higher if so many 
people were not ready to do the work. The building and opera- 
tion of electric railways, after 1898, raised the wages of capable 
laborers in many of the American states. Excepting telegraphs, 
the electrical business, in various forms, now employing hun- 
dreds of thousands, originated about the year 1880 with tele- 
phones and electric light, followed nearly ten years later with 
electric power. The bicycle business has grown up in the same 
time. The American railroads, employing now a full million, 
necessitate so much hauling to and from stations that wagon 
transportation doubtless employs now a larger percentage of the 
people than before railroads were built. Supplying new w^ants 
has made civilization. At first all effort of the savage tribe was 
simply to maintain life, being absorbed in fighting ofT enemies 
and in getting scanty food and shelter. These necessaries being 
more easily attained as mankind progressed, through invention 
of better tools and better methods, the spare time was used 
to make finer clothing, ornaments, weapons, etc. So it has 
24 



370 Getting a Lwing. 

been down to the present time. An observer wonders how the 
six milHons of people in London can live from year to vear 
with perhaps none of them directly engaged in getting food 
or materials from nature except a few lishermen and market 
gardeners. It was estimated by Edward Atkinson in 1884 
that a year's labor of one man at farming in Dakota, of one 
man at milling and barrel making, of two men at transporting 
flour to Xew York and in making cars and machines used, and 
of three men at baking and selling bread in that city, would 
supply for a year with bread a thousand people. 

Easier Production of Necessaries Releases Labor to Pro- 
duce Comforts. The fewer the men employed in producing 
food and other necessaries, the more are left to produce com- 
forts and luxuries, which will readily be received in exchange 
for the surplus of those whose income is too large to be con- 
sumed in the simpler commodities, and who may not care to 
save all the surplus to add to capital used in production. It 
is the spread of old wants, and the development of new ones, 
that has made machinery a blessing to all classes. Without 
increase of society's wants, the men displaced by labor-saving 
machinery could find work, if there were no vacant land, only 
by taking the places of the least desired workers crowded out 
upon charity, or by so lowering wages and efficiency as to 
require the labor of all not engaged v\'ith the machines to turn 

The Small Product of Former Times. In 1800, with the poor tools 
and poor methods of that day, one man's labor in England produced food 
for 10; in 1890 in America it produced food for 120. In 1807 in Prussia 
88 per cent of the people followed farming, yet food was scarce; by 1867 
those on farms had decreased to 48 per cent, yet for each inhabitant a third 
more food was produced, and that was better in quality. In India 80 per 
cent are now on farms, and the toral product of every kind per inhabitant 
is worth only $10, against $180 in England, with her great outfit of ma- 
chiner}- and her active people, and against perhaps nearly $225 in America, 
with her better machinery and abundant land. In America, since 1850, 
wealth and population have increased several times faster in cities than in 
the rural districts, farm population onh' doubling but wheat product in- 
creasing six times, and some other crops twenty" to fifty times. In England 
three-quarters of the people are now in towns or cities, exchanging manu- 
factures for food abroad, vastly reducing thus the effort required to get food 
and the rent share falling to landlords. (See C. F. Eraerick's articles, P. S. 
Quarterly, 1896.) 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 371 

out a product no larger than the fewer workers produced 
before. 

The Saving of Time in Quicker Learning of Occupations. 
Skilled men displaced by the earliest machinery suffered far 
• more than those displaced now. The trades then were m.ore 
separate, a man who had learned one being usually unable to 
turn satisfactorily to another. But now a person who can handle 
machinery of one kind can generally adapt himself quickly to 
another kind, even though he has passed middle age. Instead 
of spending years learning one trade, to be dependent upon it 
alone for a living, a worker now, to prepare for positions in 
many different industries, can acquire in a short time the neces- 
sar\- training of mind and hand. It is the training in the variety 
of work they have done that makes so useful the active young 
men employed in unskilled work about -towns. 

Displacement for the Few, New Work for the Many. 
Moreover, in the factories of to-day boys, girls, women, and 
inefficient men are employed who could never have followed 
the old handicraft trades, or have done then any work so suit- 
able or so well paid as that they do now. To a few lines of 
unattractive work or drudsrerv these \A'ere all then restricted, 
as women were until within the last three decades. Herein 
lies fit is permissible to repeat somewhat from preceding notes") 
one of the many benefits that have come with modern industry. 
This largest class of workers were in need of more opportuni- 
ties to get a living, and certainly deserved far more sympathy 
than did the skilled workers, who in their guilds had long taxed 
the public in monopoly, and who are still disposed to claim 
special privileges. It is in access to multiplied variety of em- 
ployment, as well as in education and in self-government, that 
we now have an era of opportunity for the many. It is strange 
that the good people of the old school, including such great men 
as Emerson and Ruskin, who naturally regret the passing away 
of the village shoe shop, do not notice that while one shoemaker 
was then broadened in mind by intercourse with customers 
(and with loafers) through a fourteen hour day. in the foul air 
of a small shop, shoemaking as now divided employs workers 
for about sixty separate processes or trades, carried on nine or 
ten hours a dav in ventilated factories, the shoeniaker himself 



ZJ'^ Getting a Living. 

working among them in a well paid position, with the world 
enjoying many times the per capita supply of shoes it had be- 
fore. About the same may be said of wagon and furniture 
factories, in which most of the workers now are unskilled.^ 

^Necessity of Finding a New Occupation— to an extent involving diffi- 
culty and hardship— comes to but a small fraction of the people. An 
industry generally improves so gradually that for both employers and work- 
men no more than a wholesome degree of foresight and activity is required 
to keep abreast of its progress. Farmers do not now feel that they must 
raise what their fathers raised, but study comparative demand, and change 
crops from year to year as their judgment indicates. In the few cases in 
which a trade passes away entirely, as hand work in weaving, shoemaking, 
and cabinet-making, a man reasonably alert has now sufficient years of 
notice to adjust himself to the new conditions — often to his personal advan- 
tage. A large majority of the total working class — a majority comprising 
such as stationary engineers and firemen, laborers, operatives of many kinds 
of machines, and office help in general — are prepared to change from one 
industry to another with but slight inconvenience. The present liability 
to change is an essential to progress. It was plodding along in the old 
way that produced the stagnation from which Continental Europe was 
recently awakened. A person who can get a living at but one place, or in 
but one trade unchanged, is growing helpless. With due regard to the 
maxim of the rolling stone, it is still true that preparedness for change, 
with either an employer or a workman, is one of the best traits. Rapidity 
of growth and change has made American workers far more mobile and 
independent than even the English, and will tend in many lands henceforth 
to prevent settling into ruts. 

That Society Should Compensate Skilled Men Displaced by Machin- 
ery is often suggested, and is sometimes advocated. This notion is related 
to the socialistic doctrine that people ought to help a man by purchasing 
what he has to sell, whether it is wanted or not, instead of leaving it his 
main duty to watch and provide for market changes. It is well that the 
impracticability of compensating displaced men by imposing damages on 
the employer, or by appropriating public money, will save society from a 
practice so unwise. The trouble now is that in trades in which men are 
not being displaced by machinery those of experience become so settled in 
their ways that a young man who has just learned the trade is to be pre- 
ferred, not only for quickness but largely for teachableness. As indicated 
in the preceding paragraph, a guarantee against loss in being displaced by 
improvement of machinery or process would stifle one's alertness and read- 
iness to change. To prove that he had really been damaged, helplessness 
would be to him an advantage, as ailments are sought out and prized by 
veterans seeking pensions; and the tendency with capable employers would 
be to get rid of him before the new machinery appeared. To keep one effi- 
cient, and also to maintain health and happiness, it is important that he 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 373 

The More Machinery We Have the Better. This will con- 
tinue to be a fact of the conditions of life. Invention cannot 
be overdone until release of men from the necessity of labor 

continue learning down to old age. Such has always been the practice 
with men of achievement, and their effort to learn maintains their power 
to do so. Some spirit and ambition are better for prolonging the period 
of strength than are certainty and comfort in one's work. To prevent 
dependence on expectations likely to be disappointed, men should realize 
continually that they live in a world of change, and that it is through 
change that better things come. In Mr. John Martin's plea for a guarantee 
of displaced men against poverty while an industry is being adjusted to 
machinery, he says we now virtually ask them to lay down their lives. 
What skilled man, after a long period of good pay, wants to stand forth so 
helpless as that? 

One Case of Compensation, said to be the only case, was the giving by 
a recent Massachusetts law of a right to not over a half year's pay as dam- 
ages to workers losing positions by reason of removal of factories to clear 
land for Boston water works. Such compensation seems just, but its case is 
very different from that of an invention not made by the state's power, and 
affecting no one in land or location except by lessening society's need for 
his service. Compensation of the worker for skill made less valuable would 
involve compensation of his employer for the fall in value of his plant and 
business. The trade is no more the worker's property, earned by years of 
servitude, than the business is the employer's property, built up at risk and 
expense. Of course, each must take the chances of changes in demand when 
he chooses a trade or starts a business. Nothing but taking chances will 
keep it a real choice. When the state or society guarantees against risk, it 
will be compelled, in order to be able to fulfill its obligations, to say who 
shall do this and who that. And it seems that the employer's self-interest 
will prevent dividing up processes too far, since a dwarfing of the worker 
will dwarf his efficiency. Besides, men will avoid the dwarfing jobs, and 
the union will be able to prevent such specialization as will really injure 
the man and his earning power. In society's age-long effort to escape by 
invention from hardness of life, it is unlikely that by taking the burden of 
compensating those who gain by holding it back it will obstruct the stream 
of progress (pages 139, 281). Manual training will make change easy. 

The Nerve-Wearing Monotony of Subdivided Labor, in which a 
person spends all his time in sewing a single seam, or in performing one 
process with a machine, is dwelt upon pathetically by many who find fault 
with the present industrial system. This complaint is greatly exaggerated. 
The monotony of doing the same thing, when one has become accustomed to 
it, rests the nerves instead of wearing them, and the muscles also acquire 
strength for their part in the process, as so often illustrated by reference 
to the sinewy arms of the blacksmith. The work that exhausts both mind 
and body is that which frequently involves the responsibility of new judg- 



374 Getting a Living. 

has been carried so far as to cause deterioration of character 
through idleness. This point will never be reached so long as 
supply of newer and higher wants, as at present, elevates char- 
acter, and increases usefulness and happiness. There is no 



ment, with changing and difficult movements. Not many of the sub- 
divided processes in factories, to a fit person of practice, are very laborious, 
or very exhausting in any way, when the speed is not too fast nor the day 
too long. The discipline of properly caring for a machine, and of studying 
out the best ways of using it, together with the association and inspiration 
of a large industry, saves the commonest workers in factories from dwarf- 
ing, and gives them a better development of intelligence and capacity, as 
well as a fuller life, than they could have at varied labor in the country. 
Their families have better schools, and in many occupations, as in railroad 
service, the workers are made more neat, prompt, and temperate. The 
greater the subdivision of labor the more complex and educative, for people 
prepared for it, is the industrial system, as in the largest factories and 
stores ; while the nearer the worker comes to doing all the processes him- 
self, and to being self-sufficient, the ruder is the industry and the duller is the 
man, on down the scale from backwoods life to the savage state, to either of 
which, or to other hand-working stages looked back upon longingly, a group 
can now return by cutting loose from civilization and going to the moun- 
tains, and can live there far more safely and easily than people lived in old 
times. Besides, from more and more of the heaviest labor machinery is 
bringing relief. Men could not now be hired to endure long the single- 
handed sawing of hard wood, or the mowing of grass with a scythe. (This 
subject is well discussed in C. D. Wright's "Ethical Phases of the Labor 
Question," and in Engineering Magazine, Jan. 1901.) 

Yet the Evils Should be Reduced to the Minimum. The factory system, 
like everything else of human contrivance, is not wholly beneficent in its 
tendencies, and must be so utilized as to secure the good and to avoid the 
evil. The present elaborate and increasing control by law in Great Britain 
of unhealthful and dangerous trades might well be adopted in the American 
states further than they have yet carried it; while unionism and public 
opinion should complete the effect of law to abolish work days too long, 
speed too fast, and waste in any form of health or life. For such waste 
there is no need or excuse. Very soon it lessens industry and wealth, instead 
of increasing them. (A long article on unhealthful trades appeared in 
U. S. Labor Bulletin, Jan. 1903.) The manufacture of phosphorus matches 
has just been prohibited in Germany, on the ground that the need for such 
an unhealthy business is not sufficient to justify it. In Great Britain, in 
1901, the cases of lead poisoning reported to the Home Secretary numbered 
863, against 1,058 in 1900. For violation of the factory laws, in 1900, there 
were 3,287 cases, and 3,151 convictions, the fines and costs being $19,850. 
(Chapter XIX.) 



The Promise of the Fiititre for Wage Workers. 375 

danger that machinery will displace men, and make them un- 
able to buy its products. Social reformers need not be con- 
cerned as to the market of the sock factory in which Mr. E. H. 
Crosby saw boys turning out each with machinery a product 
that would require hand workers to the number of a thousand. 
The employer, for all the socks he makes, will find out before- 
hand that they are wanted by people able to buy ; and the loss, if 
he miscalculates, will fall on him tenfold more heavily than on 
society. There is still need for a larger output of socks. The 
congressman who did not wear them followed a custom that yet 
prevails with most of the human family. What enables people 
to buy is to fill their hands with cheaply produced goods,, so that 
some of their own product may be left to exchange for goods of 
other kinds. It is those who have things that buy : where the 
house is bare the pocket is empty. For the same reason of hav- 
ing spare time or goods, as already indicated in connection with 
increase of wants. 

It Is Saving" Labor that Makes Labor, at the same time it 
makes goods. The more complicated the system of industry 
becomes, the greater the human care required to keep it in 
order. Saving of labor has so increased demand for it that as 
machinery has increased, money wages have risen, and real 
wages still faster in cheapened supplies. There never has been 
a time when all grades of labor were so widely demanded, or so 
closely utilized, as at present, nor perhaps so steadily since the 
system of neighborhood industry was left behind. (Chapter 
XVI.) And despite the elements of steadiness in the neigh- 
borhood industry of a century ago, there has been, whatever 
may be said of recent over-speculation and depression, no suf- 
fering from the latter to be compared with that which such 
conditions caused in America in the good old days between 
1775 and 1850. In large cities many thousands are now em- 
ployed in new occupations unheard of a few years ago. A vast 
army of people is required in stores, offices, and restaurants. 
Rarely does a manufacturer employ fewer people after putting 
in new machinery. Generally he employs more, though in 
other lines of work, and increases output largely. Every hour 
of labor used that could be dispensed with, deprives society of 
the goods it might have produced in other work, and lessens 



37^ Getting a Living. 

the net income from which alone the employer can pay the help 
he needs. 

And as to Equality in Bestowal of Benefits, nature — better 
than the most ingenious socialist could have done — so planned 
the forces of progress that the same increase of machinery 
which gives new work to the unskilled needing it, and which 
adds to the supplies of consumers everywhere, provides also in 
its accompanying complications new positions as managers and 
as assistants for wide-awake skilled men displaced, and new 
positions as draughtsmen, as chemists, and as higher clerks for 
young men who previously would have had no choice but to 
become skilled mechanics. Mr. Webb, trade unionist and 
socialist, agrees with Sir Robert Giffen's conclusion that the 
complexity of life arising from use of machinery has enormous- 
ly increased the number and the proportion of skilled workers 
required. Not many American boys of enterprise nowadays, 
whatever the unionist lament of the passing away of skilled 
trades, settles in a position so undesirable as that of his father. 
In Massachusetts, where, with the country's greatest develop- 
ment of machinery there has come also, under the requisite 
energy and intelligence, the country's greatest development of 
diffused prosperity, — the state labor commissioners have shown 
conclusively that despite the inflow of wave after wave of 
immigrants, who would have swamped the state if the develop- 
ment of machine industry had been lacking — that despite this 
fact the lower grades of workers have not displaced the higher 
any faster than the higher were leaving the factories anyhow, 
to fill increasing positions as clerks and teachers, or to engage 
in business with their savings. As machinery is multiplied, 
labor involves less drudgery and more of the artistic and intel- 
lectual qualities.^ The Mosely party of English workers were 
struck with the fact that in America the man is simply the mind 
of the machine, while in England he is usually the handle, and 
often one of its working parts ; that in Pittsburgh the men 
stand in safe places and move levers, instead of handling, as in 
England, the great pieces of steel in terrible heat. 

^People Are Rising to More Desirable Work. In the United States, 
of all persons gainfully occupied, the proprietor class rose from 31.36 per 
cent in 1870 to 32.96 in 1890, the clerical class from 2.80 to 5.91, and the 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 2>77 

Half the Human Race Underfed. The new or enlarged 
wants that increase total employment are chiefly for other 
things than food. Quantity of food desired does not increase 
among people well fed, though they want more and more 
variety. Perhaps half the human race, however, in China, 
India, and among the poorest in Europe and America, would 
now consume nearly double their present food supply if they 
could get more. America, Australia, and Argentina will be 
glad to supply them with more food as soon as they can pro- 
duce something to exchange for it. To do this, in India and 
China, better tools and methods are needed, though these would 
increase their food production also. Improvements are being 
introduced as fast as these people learn to want them. Many 
people in India would rather live as at present, near the starva- 
tion line, than to exert themselves to secure more. Yet their 
preference for the good old ways of their youth arises from the 
same facts of human nature, and deserves the same considera- 
tion, as does the regret felt by good and learned Americans 
over the passing of hand trades to machinery. 

Larger Consumption by the Half Civilized Will Increase 
Demand for Labor. Three-quarters of the human race, in- 
cluding the poorly fed half, have few of the comforts of life. 
When this billion of people develop wants, and produce some- 
thing to exchange, the world's demand for manufactures will 
be increased immensely, beyond what these people then man- 
ufacture for themselves, and may largely increase labor demand 
and wages in the leading manufacturing countries. In Amer- 
ica some wants are supplied too well. The market is flooded 
with all kinds of novelties which people are urged to buy. 
Many persons lack means to supply proper wants, because they 
are wasteful, are poor workers, or are engaged upon work for 
which demand is weak. Improvement more rapid than ever 
before may now be expected the world over, in production of 
goods and in supply of wants. Spread of useful knowledge 

skilled class from 20.33 to 24.10; but those in the more laborious kinds of 
work decreased from 45.51 per cent to 37.03 per cent. {Labor Bulletin No. 
u, p. 423.) From 1870 to 1890 draughtsmen increased fourfold, chemists 
threefold, and in many a skilled trade the workers were about doubled, 
while men of all work decreased greatly. (Indus. Cora. XV. 2d part, xxiii.) 



37^ Getting a Living. 

will be the cause, together with growth of energy and of self- 
control. The knowledge needed by each person poorly sup- 
plied with goods or satisfactions is what work or business he 
ought to do, and how to find an opportunity to learn it and to 
do it successfully. Such knowledge in individuals is needed 
by society much more than it needs new inventions.^ 

Bright Prospects for Society. Owners of capital are un- 
ceasingly watchful to earn a low rate of profit or interest by 
furnishing a supply of commodities both cheapened and im- 
proved. Dissatisfied wage earners and farmers should be as 
keenly watchful to find the work or product that is wanted 
most and will be paid for best. Capital is increasing and im- 
proving as never before. Many of the new factories and new 
machines surpass all previously built. Product therefore grows^ 
larger and larger, to be divided with workers in higher money 
wages or shorter days, and with consumers in lower prices. 
The need for caution is in regard to the immediate self-interest 
of the individual employer, which, like that of the labor union, 
is against society to the extent of all that people will bear with- 
out losing ability to continue buying his goods. He wants the 
product of competitors to be small, that scarcity may raise price 
for him. Laws to help him, or his trade united, by shutting out 
foreign goods and making supplies scarce, need constant watch- 
ing. Sound knowledge and patriotic purpose, with freedom 
from inordinate desire for quick personal gain, will maintain 

'How Progress Harmed the Farmer. In perhaps all the important In- 
dustries improvement has benefited the employer as well as the consumer 
except in farming. In this the benefit to the farmer himself from the later 
improvements in machinery and transportation have been chiefly confined to 
the newly settled area, their effect being to reduce value of product with a 
great majority of farmers in civilized lands ; though perhaps these have fared 
as well or better than before by reason of lower prices for what they buy. 
But the depression in farming, which began about 1880 and which in 
America has almost entirely passed away since 1898 (largely from adapta- 
tion of the business to the new conditions), was only another phase of the 
vast improvement in the living of the world's consumers. Continuing high 
prices of food, which before 1850 were always marked in England by a rise 
of the death rate among the poor, show a scarcity of land, and chiefly benefit 
its owners. Opening of new areas with railroads broke the land monopoly 
of farmers or landlords in the older states and countries, and gave the people 
in general a more abundant living. 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 379 

that impartial justice which increases capital and supplies most 
rapidly. Serious wrongs in law or custom cannot continue 
when the wage earning class and the consuming public, who to- 
gether will be the majority in a contest with a self-seeking sec- 
tion, have the intelligence to discern the truth, and the virtue to 
do their public duty. The old complaint was unfounded. 
Political Economy is not a dismal science. Under nature's 
laws, by which good must be searched out and struggled for, 
could grown men and women expect better things than these 
which are clearly within their reach? 

But Each Must be Progressive Himself. In some factory 
industries, progressive employers may make frequent improve- 
ments in machinery and in methods, reducing cost of product 
and benefiting every class — themselves in aggregate profit, the 
public in lower prices, and their needed workmen in higher 
wages. In other industries there may be few or no improve- 
ments. The capable employer in these, who utilizes his busi- 
ness possibilities to the utmost, may be able to raise wages 
somewhat, but only to workmen of superior grade like himself. 
Only such can make the additional product from which the ad- 
ditional wages are derived. The farmer who grows special 
crops, such as fruits and early vegetables, supplying a market 
requiring quickness of action, cannot be hampered with second- 
class men. For the right kind he will raise wages gladly. The 
same is true with a manufacturer who by sheer energy forces 
new life and profit into an old industry that is not being im- 
proved by product-cheapening machinery or better demand. 
The extra effort of himself must be supported by extra effort in 
his men. For wage workers who cannot or will not make this 
extra effort, that their employer may get more m.oney to pay, 
or who in the advancing industries do not keep up in the same 
way with rising requirements, there will probably be very little 
rise of money wages — per year if not per hour. Though as a free 
benefit to them from others each dollar they have will buy more 
as general production increases, the effect of their undesirable- 
ness to deprive them of work insures that they who avoid the 
burden of active effort in progress will not be carried up far by 
the progress of others. The commonest grades of cheap labor 



380 Getting a Living. 

— on farms, in retail stores, and in factory work anybody can 
learn — may not be demanded hereafter much more briskly 
than at present. Release of this labor by new automatic 
machinery may almost balance increase of demand for it in new 
kinds of work, if its demand and wages are not even lowered 
by growth of population overtaking growth of industry. The 
supply of such labor is large, never all of it being employed 
except in flush times. 

Inefficient Workers Will be Crowded Out. What has just 
been said is equally true of workers below average efficiency in 
skilled trades. Not only is there little hope of higher wages 
for these, but they will be fortunate if in their trade they con- 
tinue long to get wages at all. To do work well enough to 
satisfy the demand seems to be increasingly difficult. A grade 
of men who passed anywhere without complaint twenty years 
ago are not now able to hold a job except in small towns or 
second-class shops. Difficult work, which is coming to include 
nearly all of it in good shops, is done as far as practicable by 
regular employees, whose competency can be depended upon. 
The supply of such men is too small. Happily, there is a top 
level, with steady demand for men, in every kind of work, down 
to the commonest labor. By reason of falling prices and rising 
wages, crowding his profits at both ends, the average employer 
is unable to retain even his old men when their usefulness fails. 
Those whose work costs more than it sells for are pensioners on 
him, to the extent of that excess, and also of the relinquished 
gain a good workman would bring from the same wages and 
same machinery.^ 

Tor the Objection to Hiring Men Showing Signs of Age— an indus- 
trial fact now prevailing increasingly, and one pointed out as an evil omen 
— there are reasons that could not be otherwise. Under the common social- 
istic feeling, that with workers deserving sympathy the employer should 
ignore supply and demand values and be guided by needs, he is compelled 
to avoid having needy people around him, in order to keep from his own 
shoulders a charity burden belonging to the community as a whole. After 
the recent public execration of the coal company that collected a rent debt 
by retaining monthly for thirteen years a part of the wages of a widow's 
two boys, employers will be still more unwilling to hire those in need. This 
coal company probably took unfair advantage in renting houses and selling 
goods, but from an employer paying full market wages — all the work is 
worth to him — it is as unjust to expect support of his poor employees as it 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 381 

Is This a Wrong Condition of Things, hard and unsympa- 
thetic between man and man, or class and class ? Alany writers 
say it is. But how has it come about that the average man 

is to censure the grocer for refusing them credit, or to censure any well-to-do 
man for not supporting and thus ruining his poor neighbors. 

When No Charity is Asked, and when lowering of pay to value of work 
done is accepted as a matter of course, there will be plenty of work for elder- 
ly men in positions they can fill (page 293), while earning their way will 
so strengthen purpose and self-respect, together with bodily health and effi- 
ciency, as to prolong the working period. As to all these essential qualities, 
whatever the age, an attitude of appeal involves beggary, and becomes in- 
stantly a blight. The man of fifty, or even of sixty-five or seventy, is now 
by no means industrially dead, as some writers complain, if he has proved 
in the community that his work is worth the wages asked. Everywhere 
many workers beyond fifty are counted by the employer among his best. 
Not a few railway engineers are between sixty and seventy. The cause of 
old men's inability to get employment among strangers is the usual high cost 
of old men's work by reason of the claim for special consideration. A man 
of thirty, no less than one of sixty, is likewise rejected when such undesir- 
ableness is indicated. From such self-protection as buying less, or as 
choosing to best advantage, no power can hold an employer without over- 
balancing loss to others. One unavoidable result of Great Britain's excel- 
lent law making employers liable for damages to injured men (Chapter 
XXI.) is that less free rent is now given, and fewer old men are hired. 

Provision for Old Age Nature Requires Each to Make for Himself. 
If the president of a Boston union continues to insist that after long service 
men shall not be discharged because they are old, as was lately attempted by 
an employer there in the cases of eight men {Typographical Journal, April, 
1903, p. 367), each employer hereafter will get rid of them before old 
age comes, and will do so rightly if he is to have equal chances with new 
competitors, and to lay up an old age fund is not permitted to pay less in 
wages than the labor product is worth (page 295). For the union to support 
old members for their services to unionism (which services seem to be paid 
for in higher wages all along), lessens their effort to provide for old age 
by saving, and weakens the care for them by children. Care in old age from 
fellow workers in unionism is not much better than such care from fellow 
citizens in socialism. Except under very low wages, as in England, mutual 
aid societies, providing from dues and assessments a small allowance in 
sickness and at death, may easily result in more harm than good. What 
can be said of such societies, in New York printing offices paying weekly 
wages of $18 to $30, that do a large business in lending sums under $15 
to members at 2 per cent a week? (Labor Bulletin No. 19.) Even when 
depended upon from one's own family, expectation of care in old age is 
harmful. The man who makes best use of his powers saves money and 
keeps some of it to the end, thereby prolonging his life and independence. 



382 Getting a Living. 

now enjoys double the supply of useful things his grandfather 
had a half century ago ? From the simple fact that in every line 
the man giving most value has secured most patronage. Others 
dropping out of business have left all the supplying to be done 
by those giving most ; and then again, of these the ones giving 

and securing from his children a respect that is very wholesome. If their 
affection is worth having it will not need to be stimulated by throwing 
himself on their mercy. Whatever one's poverty, in providing for old age 
the American can do not a little. On nothing does nature permit one to 
lean. Perhaps the main cause of the recent falling of British industry behind 
the American and the German was the dependence of British owners on 
reputations built up by self-reliant grandfathers. In many an American 
community there is a man or two whom a political party has on its hands, 
to be given little jobs and offices, partly by reason of past services to the 
party, but largely because of office holding and party aid he has become 
dependent. Out-of-work benefits, though useful to prevent rate lowering, 
tend to the same effect, especially such prolonged support as that given by 
the New York typographical union when in 1894-99 it placed its unemployed 
on a farm it bought. "Because no man hath hired us" will not usually 
answer as an excuse for standing idle very long in the market place. 

There is No Escape Without Penalty from Labor or Self -Direction 
— not even in old age. If heirs do not break the will by which W. S. Strat- 
ton left $15,000,000 to found at Colorado Springs a home for the poor, the 
trustees will be compelled to require the inmates to labor as far as practi- 
cable, or the latter will succumb to a process that unpleasantly but truthfully 
may be called rotting — in body, mind, and character; and even then, in the 
relief from self-direction, only the body will be saved with any complete- 
ness. For their own good, convicts cannot long be left idk, nor poor farm 
inmates able to work, while access to soldiers' homes, however good some 
of the motives in founding them, not only leads men to relax work and get 
old quickly, and sons to neglect fathers, but brings upon the inmates a meas- 
ure of the blighting and disgusting effects of idleness and uselessness. To 
save from such a fate the old ladies of a home founded by C. W. Post of 
Michigan, he is planning a kind of rug manufacture, by which, in easy work 
at wages, the inmates can earn their support, with the cheerful content of 
the grandmother In the family, whose useful industry is characteristic. The 
rich, to avoid the bad effects of Idleness, must be occupied with the care of 
property or with philanthropy. Sport or pleasure, If not carried to excess, 
may save the body, but not the character; and the same may be said of 
culture for its own sake (not for use In serving mankind), which is only a 
kind of selfish pleasure when carried far. In the unoccupied class, to which 
belong about 125,000 men In Great Britain reporting no occupation (in 
America a man in health would now usually be ashamed to be called a 
"gentleman" in that sense), the annual death rate is said by Mr. Hobson 
to be above 60 per 1,000 — higher than with the poorest of equal age. 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 383 

least have dropped out for lack of patronage, or of employment, 
and so on in a never-ceasing selection of the fittest. The result 
is that society has been benefited immeasurably. By what has 
this result been caused? By the reward bestowed on the man 
whose product excels. It is this reward that has blessed the 
world with a continuous line of industrial achievement. Only 
through improved supplies and services can higher well-being 
come, not only in material things, but also, by giving time for 
thought, in the realm of intelligence and morals. Who im- 
agines that the honor of progress and of human betterment 
would have been, or would now be, a sufficient incentive for 
incurring the arduous sacrifices involved? As a reward for 
industrial achievement nothing would answer less substantial 
than gain in money. Society is glad to confer the gain and 
the honor too. Even then those reaching attainments worthy 
of note are very few. 

Ought the Unfit Also to Survive?^ Now if this practice 

^The Unfit Are Not Destroyed, as those socialistic writers seem to 
assume who, in condemning the present system of competition, liken it to the 
struggle in which animals and insects eat up one another. On the con- 
trary, benefit comes to the unfit man himself. Better service of the public 
by his competitors forces him into the work that suits him best — sometimes 
from a lower grade into a higher. What is more unmitigated misery than 
attempting to carry on work or business not suited to one's capacity? In- 
stead of destroying the unfit man, however useless or refractory he may be, 
competitive society gives him at least a pauper's support (incurs punishment 
from nature by being too kind to him), and is striving more and more to 
educate him up to the plane of his happier fellows — their sympathy being 
supplemented by their own gain from his elevation and loss from his 
degradation. Neither are competitors in business "anarchic," except the few 
whom abnormal conditions enable to unite in trusts meant to destroy the 
competition of outsiders — the few who can easily be shorn of their power 
through the legislation necessitated by progress. Fellow feeling among com- 
petitors is strong enough. Price cutting without good reason is everywhere 
disreputable, and trade associations abound. 

Mr. Webb's Chapter on the Higgling of the Market ("Industrial 
Democracy") which represents sellers as helplessly under the power of 
buyers, and the latter as going from one seller to another and jewing them 
down remorselessly, — is so exaggerated and untrue as to be unworthy of its 
place in his valuable book. On the contrary, the American householder, 
whatever his possession of ready money, finds when he tries to get tender 
steak or faultless butter, or to have anything done quickly or well, that he 
himself is the weaker party ; that underneath the apparent readiness of 



384 Getting a Living. 

of benefiting one's self by rewarding with patronage the man 
who gives most value has unquestionably produced the im- 
proved conditions we enjo}^ are we to conclude that progress 

sellers to do everything to get custom there is a firm rock, in the fact that the 
values they render must be fully paid for. He finds also that their anxiety 
to please is soon displaced by adequate self-protection when he presses his 
demands too far. So unpleasant is the jar when he does so that for one 
buyer who makes unnecessary trouble there are probably two or three who, 
out of regard for the seller, decide before they are ready, and thus bring loss 
to themselves. It is for this reason that many are averse to buying of a 
friend, unless, from their own ignorance in the matter, they commit their 
interests to his honor. Likewise, it is doubtless true in America, in work 
done to order, that the buyer, instead of finding fault as a "kicker," or 
making all the trouble he can as a "stinker," contents himself far oftener 
with work that is blamably faulty. Fortunately, however, there is seldom 
a lack of reliable sellers who, finding that it pays to be honest, can be fully 
trusted. Those buyers who are unwilling to pay these sellers their fair price 
find that in dickering with a seller of another kind their chance of gain is 
well balanced by chance of loss. There are only enough sellers of the latter 
kind to meet the demand for them among buyers with the same lax morals. 

Mr. Hobson's Chapter on Forced Gains ("Economics of Distribu- 
tion") — the excessive gains exacted in a trade by the party who cares least 
to contract — describes a condition that is as it ought to be if independent 
manhood is to exist. Under nature's system of developing capability the 
risks to a civilized buyer could not, without making results worse, be made 
less than they now are in the best governed states, on the same principle that 
the world could not have been made an easier place in which to get a living. 
By being prepared for emergencies, and by not depending on having the way 
smoothed for them, people avoid having to sell a horse suddenly when there 
is but one buyer. Besides, though one party has the power to take unfair 
advantage of the other, he does not dare to do so if he desires to have deal- 
ings with him in the future, or to retain the favor of the community. A 
noted merchant of New York believed the main cause of his success was his 
practice of caring for the interests of "the fellow at the other end of the 
bargain." Nearly any seller, in order that a customer may continue to be 
pleased, will lessen his immediate gain by inducing the latter to choose at 
less cost an article more suitable. In very little trading of any consequence 
does one party have undue power over the other. The rarity of such power 
is indicated by the agitation for control of trusts, few of which can raise 
prices unduly without loss. The only way in which it can come about that 
"one of the chief gains of a better industrial order will be the removal of 
bitter business antagonisms and their degrading influences on character" 
(Hobson), will be by choice of morality under present competitive tests — a 
choice that has already removed such antagonism from most business, that 
in the process has developed good character to a degree not otherwise pos- 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 385 

has gone far enough, and that now all business effort ought to 
survive, the unfit with the rest? This sounds kind. How 
would it w^ork? Would the fittest manufacturer or merchant 
continue long to risk his capital, or rack his brain, to improve 
quality or reduce price, if he did not thereby gain patronage 
away from the less fit, who plodded along in the even tenor of 
their way, basking in the sunshine of assured public support? 
They would all be unfit very soon, except an occasional enthu- 
siast, devoted to the new altruism, and in time society would 
return to barbarism for another start. It would be the same 
with wage workers. If extra fitness did not get the work and 
the higher wages, displacing the less fit, extra fitness would 
soon disappear. Why should a man strive and strain in his 
work if he did not thereby get a great deal more than others by 
whom no extra effqft is made? Is it wrong for a city printer 
setting complicated time-tables to get three dollars a day while 
his brother setting simple matter on a country paper gets but 
one dollar? And is it more selfish for the former to want all 
he earns than for the latter to want a share of that earned by 
somebody else and by that envious wanting to make his work 
worth less still ? Without competition, which is the life of more 
things than trade, there can be no progress — nothing but stag- 
nation and decay; and no competition will suffice that is not a 
striving for prizes that are won by some and hence are denied 
to others. In the tribal village, as in the family to-day, there 
was competition hardly less exacting, in which the strong 
gained leadership and control. 

What About Involuntary Poverty ? Yet surely a man will- 
ing to work ought to have a chance to get a living. But who 
is to be responsible for providing him with employment ? There 
is a delicate adjustment here in the human will. Nature does 
not abhor a vacuum in physics any more than she abhors a 
guarantee in economics. The certainty of employment^ dilated 

sible, and that Is bringing the only kind of a better order capable of sur- 
viving. 

^The Rising Salary, Security of Tenure, and Eventual Pension enjoyed 
by professors In great universities like Harvard, and recently recommended 
by President Eliot as the ideal conditions to be sought by wage workers in 
general, are really possessed by the latter now, together with the pride in 
one's work, the permanent home, and the salutary local attachments. The 
25 



386 Getting a Living. 

upon by kind-hearted dreamers can never come to men in their 
present nature without endangering civihzation. Only a small 
proportion of the human race do really good work now, and 

young professor's rising salary is earned by increasing knowledge and effi- 
ciency, in the same way that the young mechanic passes to higher work and 
better pay; while security of position depends with each on his being the 
best available man for the place. When consideration for him is the reason 
for the professor's retention (the trouble of getting rid of undesirable pro- 
fessors is well known) the college is injured and the effect on him is tinged 
with pauperization. The professor's pension is fully paid for in advance, by 
his accepting a salary materially smaller than his grade of ability earns, 
without future guarantee, in other professions. Large corporations, for their 
own gain, are now giving pensions to employees (page 104), but these prefer 
to collect all in cash wages, and to buy insurance for themselves. That the 
latter method of providing individually for the future should generally con- 
tinue, as heretofore, is undoubtedly to be desired for all concerned, especially 
for society. * 

Bearing Daily More of the Risk and Trouble of conducting one's own 
affairs would keep professors more firmly grounded on the practical facts 
of life, and prevent their reputed soaring into realms of abstraction. Un- 
questionably the main reason why so many preachers are poorer than others 
receiving a quarter less in net income, is the weakening of preachers' cap- 
ability by the practice (usually necessary or desirable) of providing them 
with homes, and the other practice (not so desirable) of caring for them in 
many ways. More objectionable yet, perhaps, is the consequent tendency 
with their families to regard extra attentions as a right. Hence, though on 
both sides the motive is generally good, such spending of church resources 
soon reaches a point where they are not only wasted, but result in positive 
harm. To direct kindly feeling wisely is a duty enforced by nature with 
the usual penalties. In the occupations m.entioned, best results may perhaps 
be attained under permanence of tenure involving pensions or kindly consid- 
eration ; but it is nevertheless true that from constant risk and responsibility, 
imposed by nature as conditions of efficiency, relief by other forces than 
one's own effort soon brings conditions decidedly worse. The only safe 
permanence in a position is that which one is continually required to earn. 

A Claim on the Plant and Business in Favor of the Employee— to be 
based for the present on morals and later perhaps on law — was supported 
at some length by Mr. John Brooks Leavitt in the recent book 'Tabor and 
Capital" (Putnam). Such a claim might be established, but at what cost? 
By large corporations, as stated above, this arrangement is desired, in pen- 
sions and benefit funds, which enable- them to keep down wages and to 
control employees through the effect to make the latter less able to leave 
positions (page 106). The more completely the value of labor is paid for in 
present wages, as unionists desire, the smaller becomes the possible claim 
for benefits later (page 295). If threat of strike, public opinion, or law 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 387 

perhaps fewer do their best, whether that is good or not, 
although extra reward is usually certain, either in wages or in 
profits. The work of perhaps half the race — wage workers, 

enabled employees to hold their positions against others more desired by 
the employer, as was apparently done in the case of the New York elevated 
railroad (page 368), or curtailed his present right to lay off men at any 
time, the risk of loss from having to keep or provide for men not needed 
would justly and necessarily be guarded against, by keeping down wages, 
by declining the less profitable business and especially by hiring none of 
a desirableness not proved. 

All is Paid for in Wages. The worker's need for employment is as 
great as the employer's need for labor. As these two needs balance one an- 
other, there being no choice but to work and to hire, the fact that the plant 
-would be useless without the worker gives him no extra claim. The same could 
be said of his labor power without the plant. And what his labor adds to 
the rising value of the going concern (which value socialists would empha- 
size) is paid for in wages just as truly as what it adds to the value of 
current product, and as truly as the rising value the employment gives to the 
3'oung worker's labor is paid for in higher wages. Neither kind of value, 
without full payment in wages, can an employer obtain long without having 
these wages raised from the influence of higher pay by competitors. They 
will not let another gain more from low prices for labor than from high 
prices for goods. While a resident has some moral right to be hired before 
a stranger (page 243), his claim on a job is vitally different from the 
tenant's right by custom in Ulster (now settled by law for all Ireland) to 
have his land for generations if the rent was paid. Guaranteed permanence 
in a right to land results in its best use and care, but by a guaranteed right 
to a job the labor and character of the ordinary man would be ruined. The 
■employer's right of instant dismissal is balanced by the worker's right of 
instant withdrawal. Each, by his own loss, is effectively prevented from 
•exercising his right without good reason. Whatever claim to his job the 
worker earns with faithful service, the employer is glad to recognize; and 
whatever claim on the worker's service the employer earns with fair treat- 
ment, the worker is glad to recognize. Moreover, an approach to involun- 
tary servitude is involved in Mr. Leavitt's plan, since, if the employer could 
not discharge, neither could he be required to incur damage through the 
employee's leaving. If this liberty were given to the latter alone, the em- 
ployer's extra risk would be well guarded against by keeping down wages 
and by not hiring. Society cannot possibly make the matter more favorable 
to the employee than he can (but wisely prefers otherwise) make it now 
by time contract, in which any disadvantage to the employer lowers the pay. 

Trade Unionists Do Not Want a Return to the Patriarchal System, 
under which the serf or dependent was sure of a living for life, yet never 
had. much besides. However, in strikes by the employees of coal mines, 
street railways and other monopolies, not only do they ask aid of public 



388 Getting a Living. 

employers, and all — is barely passable with the person paying 
for it, yet upon its acceptability depends the continuance of the 
employment or patronage from which they live. 
. Employment Guaranteed by the State or by Custom. If 

that is the condition now, so few putting forth their best effort, 
what would be the condition if employment and a living were 
assured by the state, according to some plan of socialism ? And 
how would it be possible for a state official to inspect work or 
product so justly as it is inspected now by the buyer who must 
pay for and use it? If the mass of workers accomplished less 
than at present, there would be a smaller output of goods to 

opinion to compel payment of wages deemed proper, with a right to positions 
against non-unionists, but by some observers even laws for this purpose are 
suggested, in compulsory arbitration or other state interference. The interest 
of the public in continuous service by these monopolies would constitu- 
tionally justify laws fixing the labor contract and compelling submission to 
arbitration; but from loss by any guarantees that forced the employer beyond 
the best conditions his own self-interest would concede to a good union, he 
would justly save himself by keeping down wages, raising prices, or curtail- 
ing business. By nature's law of compensation, every advantage gained 
must be paid for in some way — if not otherwise, by harm to the character 
of beneficiaries and by varied injury to society. In buying labor, as in 
other exchange, nothing can force one to continue further than he is led by 
his own gain. Beyond this point it is first taxation and then robbery, by 
either of which his business is soon stopped. 

Enlightened Self -Interest on Both Sides is Removing the Trouble 
here, so that no new kind of aid, from either public opinion or law, will be 
needed in regard to the employee's right to his position, whether the business 
be competitive or in the class of monopolies. Unionists are realizing that 
they must make their work more desirable than that of non-unionists readily 
to be hired, while consequently employers are fast finding out that it pays 
them to recognize the union, and to win the good will of their men by 
treating them considerately (page 109). In the welfare of employees the 
owners of a permanent industry are as much interested as is the public. The 
arbitrary cuts in wages, and discharge of men, which provoked the railway 
riots of 1877, would not occur now, except occasionally when a trust dis- 
mantles a plant, and hence has no further need for the employees or interest 
in the town. Sound morals, public spirit, and business policy require an 
employer, in view of his men's dependence on him (page 198), to notify 
them of approaching changes, to discharge none without good reason, and 
generally to guard their welfare, though not to the extent of incurring loss 
to be previously provided for as stated above. Such loss to him results also 
in loss to them. 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 389 

divide; and the effort of the few most industrious would be 
paralyzed by having to give in taxation a large share of their 
product to the huge army of state-supported incompetents. 
Consequences would differ but little if employment were 
assured, not by the state, but by benevolent opinion or custom. 
If the employer should come to feel that he had to keep men 
who did poor work, or to find work for additional men because 
of their need for food instead of his own need for workers, — - 
amount and quality of work done would fall, and product to 
divide would decrease. Not only is higher welfare in material 
things almost wholly a matter of production, but of production 
by each individual for himself. Little change from the present 
division of the product can be brought about by better bargain- 
ing over wages, (page 133), or by taxing men's profits for the 
public. The great and beneficent change that is possible must 
come mainly through each person's producing more value for 
himself (thus enlarging supply to others), by acquiring more 
knowledge and efficiency, and by selling his labor where its 
demand value is highest. 

Only a Dependent Can Claim Employment as a Right. No 
person not to be aided or supported as a dependent has a right 
to employment. He cannot demand to be hired, any more than 
a merchant can demand that one shall buy. His guarantee of 
a chance to get a living is nature's law of necessity for labor. 
This law is inexorable, and needs no reenforcement by society. 
People hire a man becaiise they must have labor, not because 
he needs wages. The latter motive is charity, and soon pauper- 
izes any but a sterling character. What a man has is a right to 
work. When division of labor came he gave up stock raising 
or farming for himself, and depended on employment from 
others, because he knew they would want his labor, not that 
they ought to want it if they could do without it. They 
exercise their own right to work when they do without 
him, and serve themselves. He exercises the same liberty 
when he chooses what to work at, how diligently, and in 
what place, and how to spend his wages. In the natural diffi- 
culty of producing things, and in the growth of new wants 
as this difficulty is lessened, his labor will always bring a return, 
and with employment as regular as his own and society's 



390 Getting a Living. 

wisdom will permit. The socialistic claim that society owes 
workers employment and a living, angrily asserted in thousands 
of trade union and general labor meetings in American cities 
during 1893-94, and cherished in all seasons by many in the 
less successful classes of city workers, does not make employ- 
ment for the sake of aid any the less charity by bitterly repu- 
diating that term, and by calling it a sharing by the workers 
in what as its producers they are alleged to own by right. The 
test of charity here includes the facts that the product of such 
labor is not wanted by the public which pays for it, and that the 
work is given to help the poor ; also, that the wages previously 
received by those helped, in their usual work, were generally as 
much as their labor product was worth in the market. What 
such people have a right to from society includes a spare allow- 
ance of this emergency support, by reason of the demoralizing 
effect on the public of seeing people suffer, but consists mainly 
of such industrial education, such kindly encouragement to 
effort, and such a wise adjustment of laws and customs, as 
will best enable them to choose and learn the work that society 
does want, and from it to earn their own living with labor 
values that the buyer recognizes. All. this is well understood by 
most people — by those in every class who see how nature is con- 
stituted, and adjust themselves to it.^ 

^Who Is It That Curtails the Right to Work ? 

"To my mind, chief among the needs that are pressing is the need that 
every man and woman should be secure in the right to make a living by 
labor. The right of man to work is a right that civilization seems to have 
forgotten. In some way society should secure to every earnest citizen the 
right to work — more than that, the right to rest from his work." (Edwin 
Markham, 1902.) 

"Out on the roads they have gathered, a hundred thousand men, 

To ask for a hold on life as sure as the hold of the wolf in his den. 

They ask but the leave to labor, to toil in the endless night. 

For a little salt to savor their bread, for houses water-tight." 

(Markham, 1903.) 
Jobs provided by the state to help the workers are meant in this appeal, 
which few men would be so unmanly as to make personally — jobs whose 
product, by falling below its cost in wages, would soon bring want, and 
would make the workers too dependent to shift for themselves when the 
system broke down. Those who do not labor with their hands for wages, 
especially the employers, might do more toward giving workers rest, by 
shortening the day where it is too long; but this large class desire for every 
human being free access to employment. Curtailment of the right to work 
seems to proceed wholly from the laboring class themselves. The introduc- 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 391 

Attractiveness of Socialism. Workingmen are excusable 
for being drawn toward socialism. In view of the hard life 
endured by the mass of the human race, while the few possess 

tion of unionism Into a town brings hardship to a man shut out from work, 
or falling under disfavor, because he objects to joining, in which objection 
many a good man may feel justified by reason of the compulsion involved, 
and sometimes by reason of the radicalism of leaders. Old men and slow 
men may be forced to leave town in order to get work, being unable to 
earn the high union rate, and employers not being allowed to pay them 
less. There has been not a little of this experience in the rapid spread of 
unionism into the smaller towns of America during 1901-3. 

Hardship to This Extent May be Unavoidable (page 293), since 
unionism is now clearly a necessity. When unionism is carried too far to the 
lower trades and to the smaller towns, into which the slower workers are 
forced, the hardship caused may be only temporary, since unionism does 
not last where it is not needed — where under small employers the workers 
may fare better on the average without it. It cannot proceed so far as to 
take away entirely the non-member's right and opportunity to work — as 
to shove him off the earth — though in its spread it may be to many a very 
disagreeable force. In the practice of shutting out non-unionists by boy- 
cotting a business man who lets a job to a contractor employing them, unions 
generally permit small non-union shops to exist in the large cities on the 
cheaper grades of work; and though in a small city knowledge of all the 
people and all the work gives unionism occasional periods of well nigh abso- 
lute power, it generally permits the older or slower carpenters to make a 
living as non-members on small jobs. The tendencies to delay or abandon 
proposed building when too much labor trouble is involved, and to resist 
unionism when Its coercion Is carried too far, are wholesome restraining 
forces. Its decline in small cities when the business rush subsides could 
probably be traced In many cases to its Immoderate use of power, and to 
weariness of Its compulsion. Yet It seems true that "the unskilled and less 
efficient workman has few greater foes than trade unionism." (C. P. Sanger, 
London.) 

The Negro's and the Chinaman's Right to Work. For the fear of 
unionism which the public often feels, reasonable working men are not 
responsible, but nature, which made unionism necessary. But the wide- 
spread readiness In the working class to ruthlessly shut out a man from 
work because he is a Negro, or a Chinaman, has only the same justification, 
of might making right, that has always given the spoil to the strong, and 
that lies in the upper class thought of a dollar a day being enough for one 
who Is only a laboring man. Preventing Immigrants from coming may be 
just and wise, but not so Is persecuting those already here to remain. Often- 
times the tendency of unionists Is to treat other races or classes of labor 
likewise when these have the Chinaman's lack of influence. A union of 
carpenters in New Jersey refused admission to five Jews. In the eflrort in 



392 Getting a Living. 

more wealth and leisure than they can personally use, it seems 
that some arrangement ought to be possible by which the people 
as a whole, organized in a cooperative commonwealth, could 
own and carry on all industry, under elected managers, and 
from the surplus now lavishly falling to the rich could add 
materially to the living of all those scantily supplied. The 
oversight of course is of the fact that by nature capability of 
character can neither begin, nor continue to exist, except by 
individual effort and responsibility. The socialistic idea — 
appearing in ancient times in Plato's model for a republic, at- 
taining great prominence in the French Revolution of 1789, 
and being worked into various plans of social reconstruction, 
during the early and middle portions of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, by French and German writers, including Proudhon, Las- 
salle, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Karl Marx — was eagerly im- 
bibed by the lighter or less balanced minds in the enthusiastic 
waves of trade unionism that have occasionally swept over 
England and America. In the growth of the Knights of Labor 
in America from 1882 to 1888, and in the spread of unionism 

coal mining and other trades to unionize newly arrived foreigners, the desire 
to benefit them is doubtless secondary as a motive to the purpose of prevent- 
ing them from displacing at lower pay those composing the union previously. 
The Atlanta University's exhaustive report of 1903 on Negro artisans shows 
that, despite the great strike of both whites and blacks in New Orleans in 
1892 to aid Negro teamsters, Negroes are now shut out of the union practi- 
cally wherever they are too few to be feared as non-unionists, but are ad- 
mitted readily enough where their number is considerable. The American 
Federation's rule to admit to affiliation no union that excludes Negroes, it has 
not been enforcing strictly — apparently being unable to make its policy (of 
gaining ends politically and otherwise by unionizing the entire class) dis- 
place the common monopolistic policy by which in a city or a trade the 
union tends to shut out new men when it can. In 1902 the national union of 
stationary engineers voted enthusiastically to exclude Negroes. It is not tc 
be supposed that brotherly "solidarity" is at bottom the reason why Chinese 
and Japanese are now being admitted to unions in the far West. 

There Are Glass Houses on Both Sides in the contest between labor 
and capital. Fear of one's fellows, with unwilling submission to other 
coercion than that of the law, still exists widely in the most civilized 
society. The saying that there is none to molest, or to make afraid, is far 
less true in America now than it was thirty years ago, as to the exercise of 
business freedom and rights all are supposed to possess. Fortunately the 
trouble is the travail of progress, not a settled and dulling oppression. 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 393 

among the unskilled workmen of Great Britain in 1889-92, this 
idea proved useful by inspiring dull or passive men* with hope 
and purpose of attaining better things in life. It is the char- 
acteristic of a new unionism — of plans not pruned down by ex- 
perience. When thus awakened from their lethargy by this 
over-colored picture of future possibilities, men have learned 
to organize and strive for mutual advancement, as an individual 
is led on in achievement by unattainable hopes held out in his 
imagination. Overdrawn pictures, therefore, result in these 
cases in not a little good. 

Sounder Ideas Soon Begin to Appear, learned from ex- 
perience in futile attempts to change too far a system of in- 
dustry made what it is by the workings of nature. Gradually 
men give up the impossible socialistic hopes discussed in this 
chapter, and at different places in this book in connection with 
rent, interest, profits, and wages. They perceive that capital- 
istic (instead of socialistic) production prevails because, 
through its natural eft"ect to reward every man according to his 
w^ork, society gets the largest and best supply of useful things, 
and the highest developm.ent of capacity in men. They learn 
that the value of a wage worker's product, fixed by the natural 
influences of available supply and demand, cannot be changed 
without changing these; that to raise value by diminishing 
supply throws some men out of work and gives all less to con- 
sume ; and that as in order to increase demand, price must gen- 
erally be lowered, it is the man turning out a larger or better 
product, to increase income with larger sales at slightly lower 
prices, that can get and hold in higher wages a portion of the 
extra value his own and his employer's diligence produces. 
They notice that the employer's reward in profit, soon brought 
to the lowest limit by efforts of other employers to share it, is 
fixed naturally by supply of and demand for his managing 
ability, just the same as the high wages commanded by special 
skill are fixed above those for labor less desired. They find 
that a union comprising the best workers — not to be displaced — 
can take in wages all net income above the marginal em- 
ployer's necessary profits ; but that to raise one's wages further 
— product value being fixed by consumers' wants beyond his 
reach — he must either turn out more of the same product, or 



394 Getting a Living. 

sell his labor higher elsewhere. Level-headed men of the older 
unions comprehend all these things, and thus advance their 
crafts accordingly. 
To Understand Thus the Possibilities of Wage Workers 

is the somewhat difficult mental task before the thoughtful among 
them who would actually improve their condition without un- 
founded discontent. So long as a man holds socialistic notions, 
nursing exaggerated feelings of unjust treatment, and looking 
for a time when good is to come to him apart from his own 
individual effort, — so long his tendency will be to neglect to 
acquire skill, and habits of industry and thrift. Without these 
habits he is worth little to the public, and little he will get. 
Workingmen, to the advantage of any considerable number of 
them, will never have the chance to deceive the people as certain 
favored classes of capitalists sometimes deceive, for their own 
gain at the people's loss. In striving for self-advancement, 
workingmen, to make progress, must confine their attention 
to things within reach — to individual effort to do the most and 
best work, and to both individual and union effort to sell this 
work for all it can be made to bring. 

Socialism Was the Only Practicable System of society in 
tribal times, when people had to live together as a great family 
for the sake of protection from enemies, and in order to get a 
living by the crude and uncertain methods of barbarism. By 
nature people in any age fall back on socialism in times of emer- 
gency. The members of the Christian church, for a short time 
at its beginning in Jerusalem, put their property together and 
had all things in common, their embracing of the new faith 
having the effect to shut them out from their previous means 
of support. But in the present age, apart from dire emergency, 
socialism could not be maintained by the effort of all classes 
together. If under a widespread craze every man in the coun- 
try heartily swore to support a socialistic commonwealth, it 
would soon be found that few were living up to the agreement. 
Many a man would secretly keep back from the common fund a 
part of his product for himself, as did Ananias and Sapphira 
when they sold their possession at Jerusalem. Nothing is more 
settled in human nature than unwillingness to labor without 
large and clear personal gain otherwise beyond reach. Only 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 395 

the few of high character, moved by regard for others, would 
labor effectively (and these not long) if without effective labor 
there were a chance to attain one's desires from a collective 
fund. To maintain sufficient steadiness of work for support 
under socialism, people must be led by religious faith and set- 
tled principle, as are the Shakers and others in America (page 
93) ; by pressing need for one another's help, as were the Pil- 
grims for a short time at Plymouth ; or by the power of a ruler, 
like Captain John Smith in the Virginia colony, when he 
enforced his decree that those who would not work should not 
eat. The pressing need and the ruler's power generally come 
together, as in the sieges of Kimberly and Mafeking. In the 
socialism of barbarous tribes, before it gives way to private 
ownership and rise toward civilization, people are held to their 
work by the stern power of necessity, of custom, and of au- 
thority.^ 

Impossibility of Division of Wealth by Violence. But 
among the possessing classes there is no indication that they 
will ever swear allegiance to a socialistic commonwealth ; and 
those who are able to get property are usually none the less 
able to have and to hold. Taking their wealth by violence, to 
divide among the needy, sometimes hinted at by dynamite ex- 
tremists, would stop their farming, mining, and manufacturing. 
As at any one time the country has perhaps less than a year's 
supply of food and fuel, the poor and all others would soon be 

'Government Service and Socialism. In matters beyond the power of 
men acting individually, or with services not thus to be rendered well, society 
is socialistic still. This is the case with government provision of roads, 
bridges, postal facilities, etc. In the matter of irrigation in the Rocky Moun- 
tain states, circumstances for many years compelled the Mormons and other 
settlers to cooperate, and exhaustion of water in easy reach is now leading to 
control of irrigation by the government. In Australia individuals are feeble 
before the dry climate and great distances, and hence public welfare requires 
there more government intervention than is beneficial in other lands. The 
need for more socialism arises in these cases from misfortune or natural 
disadvantages. In ownership by British cities of street railways and model 
tenements, more socialism is necessitated, partly by the disadvantage of 
density of population, and partly by a desirable rise in civilization, enabling 
the city to benefit its people greatly by supplying economically many serv- 
ices. . Such a rise in capability of honest self-government seems to admit of 
a considerable extension of public ownership of monopolistic services. 



39^ Getting a Living. 

in want. In the dullest times only a small fraction of the 
nation's workers could long be spared. But violent division of 
goods is hardly worth considering. Anybody knows that such 
an attempt would speedily come to naught before the sense of 
justice on which society rests. If the continued prevalence 
of this sense of justice were doubted, accumulation of capital 
for production would be checked, business stagnation would 
set in, and poverty would be terribly increased. By the reason- 
able mind, despite the crying need for reform of monopolies, 
very few who have property are considered robbers.^ 

But Recent Socialistic Agitation Has Resulted in Much 
Good. Not only has the hope it awakens served to widen 
among wage workers their movement for self-help through 
unionism, but it has also pointed out abuses, and brought pubHc 
opinion to a better realization of the unnecessary hardness of 
the lot of the common people. Amelioration of their condition 
has become popular in all the enlightened countries. Leaders 
of thought are pointing out the necessity of unionism ; men of 
influence are active in promoting good will between labor and 
capital; philanthropy is engaged in a great variety of enter- 

^Need of the Working Class for Steady Production. A prominent lec- 
turer, touching upon the line of thought in F. Hopkinson Smith's novel '*Tom 
Grogan," which portrays some of the worst features of unionism, expressed 
in 1900 a belief that strikes would eventually lead to war. He must have 
meant riots, perhaps bloody and destructive, but necessarily short-lived. 
People who do not accumulate property, nor conduct independent business, 
cannot carry on a war of consequence. The sinews of war, in the form of 
supplies, are no less necessary than men. Though everything ready for use 
were taken by force, the stoppage of production would soon bring peace, 
by scattering and destroying the people, if not otherwise. Men indulging in 
violence, whatever their notions as to the justice of their cause, could not 
long hold out against men of equal courage defending their families and 
property. Fortunately, the influential labor leaders do not think of taking 
property by force. They know that violence in strikes injures their cause, 
and that the working classes, above all others, want uninterrupted produc- 
tion, with recourse to the strike only as a last resort. The many working 
people who have homes and bank deposits to lose are safe on the side of law 
and order, without which what liberty there is belongs only to the shrewd 
and strong, who prey on all others with impunity. Those who applauded 
the forcible taking by citizens of coal from cars in the winter of 1902-3, and 
who apparently felt as if a new public power had been discovered, seemed 
not to notice that to get coal thus there was only about one chance. 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 397 

prises for uplifting the poor ; government is disposed to go as 
far with laws favoring labor as wisdom will permit; and in 
general education these forces unite, to lead all classes to seek 
the great possibilities of good that are attainable through intel- 
ligence and foresight. Very important also has been the effect 
of socialistic teaching in promoting the movement to tax inher- 
itances, and to save for the people the surplus gains of munici- 
pal and other monopolies. Reforms of this character now in 
progress were outlined in the preceding chapter, and were 
touched upon in the first four chapters of the book.^ 

^Socialism To-day in Germany is represented by a large party (3,000,000 
votes in 1903 — a plurality), which elects an influential minority (8i out of 
397 in 1903, 58, before) of parliament, and places many of its can- 
didates in local offices. To a less extent the same is true of France, which for 
several years has had a socialist in her national cabinet; and socialistic 
sentiment in some form has become an important element in politics in every 
European country in which the common people vote. While largely in- 
fluenced by the socialistic doctrine of state ownership of all land, capital, 
and business, and while including many extremists, and issuing sometimes 
manifestoes demanding a leveling of all to an equality without regard to serv- 
ice, — these in positive action are rather democratic than socialistic parties, 
seeking to secure for the common people more and more of the power and 
privilege so long held by the upper classes. The socialistic action of these 
parties consists of agitation (much of it successful) for additional public 
regulation of mines and factories, employers' liability laws, state insurance 
against accident and old age, and other intervention by the government for 
the welfare of working people. As the socialists, increasing in number, ac- 
quire power to affect legislation, they necessarily turn from impossible ideals 
to reforms that are workable. 

Political Strikes in Europe. Recently the party of the comro.on people, 
led by the socialists and labor unions, has been more prominent in Belgium 
than in any other country, and seems destined to secure there very soon its 
demand for universal suffrage, either by the pressure of agitation and strikes, 
or by outright revolution. Large and in some cases riotous strikes in many 
Belgian industries, in April, 1902, were declared off before much injury 
had been incurred by business, but not until the suffrage reform movement 
had been greatly accelerated. It was largely by strikes that the Belgian 
suffrage reform of 1890 was secured. Strikes for the same purpose, of secur- 
ing extension of the right to vote to more men of the lower class, were re- 
sorted to in May, 1902, by the social democratic party of Sweden, and the 
Swedish parliament promptly took action toward the reform demanded. In 
Holland also, in February, 1903, a strike of 90,000 railway workers and 
others was threatened, in opposition to a pending bill for prohibiting strikes 
on railways; but this threat proved the need for the proposed law, which 



398 Getting a Living. 

was speedily enacted. This new and political use of strikes, without griev- 
ance against employers, though it seems to contain an element of mob intimi- 
dation of the legislature, is perhaps rather a use of the old right of revo- 
lution, as a last resort in changing an unsatisfactory government. Such 
strikes may not become an abuse, since they would injure the cause agitated, 
and weaken the labor movement, if the political demands were not generally 
acknowledged as just. The many strikes and riots of the last several years 
in Russia, by students and workingmen, were of a revolutionary nature, 
and have produced the desired effect, in the Czar's recent concession of re- 
ligious liberty, of some measure of local self-government, and of various 
reforms to benefit the lower classes. 

Socialism in English-Speaking Countries.— In Great Britain, though 
trade unionists and socialists elect about a dozen labor members of Parlia- 
ment, and many minor local officials, the separate political party of socialists 
is small ; but the tendency of prevailing opinion, without much regard to 
party, is socialistic to the extent of public ownership of all service monopolies 
except railroads, and of an elaborate and growing system of laws to pro- 
tect labor. The same is true, to a less extent, of the United States, and here 
too the separate body called the Socialistic Labor Party is insignificant in 
numbers and influence, polling but 40,000 votes in the presidential election 
of 1900. It has consisted almost wholly of immigrants from Continental 
Europe, living mainly in large cities. A new organization called the Social 
Democratic Party, led by Eugene V. Debs, leader of the railway strikes of 
1894, and consisting mainly of the native American class, polled 87,00a 
votes in 1900. Brockton and Haverhill, Mass., now have socialist mayors, 
as they have had before, and a number of -socialist aldermen; Hartford, 
Bridgeport, San Francisco^ Des Moines, and a few smaller places have trade 
unionist mayors ; in a number of cities a few socialists have been elected 
to the council or to minor local offices, and at many places trade unionists, 
by election or appointment, occupy such positions. But in their yielding to 
temptation their success in politics has often harmed the cause of labor. One 
reason for the exceptionally bad features of unionism in the Chicago build- 
ing trades in the strike of 1900 was the connection of union leaders with the 
city government, a dozen or more of them holding appointive positions. 
After the strike the unions made rules to prohibit the holding by some of 
their officials of certain political places. 

Political Parties of Workingmen. In these local cases there has been in 
some elections a separate party of workingmen. Both in America and in 
Great Britain the union of working class voters into an irresistible separate 
party has been thought of as possible; but in each country labor unionists 
have found it best to remain in the two old parties, both of which are anx- 
ious to win votes by serving them. The American Federation of Labor has 
repeatedly voted against forming a separate part\\ Moreover, any policy 
too radical for the old parties would ordinarily be opposed by the main body 
of unionists, as they oppose socialism. The variously socialistic vote in the 
American state elections of 1903 was much larger than ever before (possibly 



The Promise of the Future for Wage Workers. 399 

350,000), partly because of the anthracite coal companies' unreasonable 
refusal to recognize unionism. In Great Britain, since the court decisions 
of 1901-2 holding union funds liable for damages, the trade unionists, in the 
hope of securing new laws, are leaving the old parties and voting in about 
fifty districts for labor candidates for Parliament, by which means they hope 
to double soon the number of labor members. The fund raised by unions 
for political expenses is expected to reach soon $350,000 a year. In all the 
countries mentioned there are in the educated middle class a few active re- 
formers who advocate going very far toward state ownership of land and 
capital. In Australasia, though there is no political party called socialists, 
a great majority of the people have socialistic ideas, and the state has gone 
furthest of all in carrying on various kinds of business for the people, and in 
enacting laws to benefit the working class. The avowed socialists of the 
world, by their own estimate, number about 7,000,000. The main centre of 
their activity is in the building of the great cooperative department store in 
Brussels. A few of the more extreme socialists are still hostile to trade 
unionism, regarding it as a mere palliative for making the present indus- 
trial order endurable, which they desire first of all to destroy; but as a 
rule socialism is now, in all lands, friendly to unionism, and many workers 
are adherents of both (page 292). Socialism, in the form of a convention 
society called the International Working People's Party, divided soon into 
two bodies, one more violent than the other, arose in Europe in the six- 
ties. As a party it arose in Germany in the seventies, and as a doctrine it 
spread in England and America during the eighties. 

The Different Socialistic Doctrines. Socialists think that the state, as 
the owner of all land and capital, should employ all the people, paying 
wages differing somewhat, according to work done, and to reasonable need, 
and permitting private ownership of consumable wealth — not of land, or 
of capital in business. Many fantastic schemes have been suggested for 
carrying out this plan. Communists want all to share equally, without re- 
gard to service rendered, and without private ownership of consumable 
wealth. Anarchists are the violent, bomb-throwing class, opposed to all 
government as useless except for oppression, and hence believing that the 
first thing to be done is to kill the rulers and destroy the present system of 
society. Some anarchists in Continental Europe have been embittered by 
harsh repression of aspirations for liberty. This is probably the case with 
the Russian Nihilists. The anarchists who killed the Chicago policemen in 
1886 belong to an excited class who brood and rave over the evils of life, in 
the bitterest atheism, until their ideas become distorted. In fact, disbelief in 
Christianity, and hatred of successful people, are common in all these grades 
of socialists, though they include also not a few devout Christians. Philo- 
sophical anarchists have no part in violence, but believe that if govern- 
mental restraint were abolished people would be just and good by nature. 
Revolutionary socialists are the few socialists and anarchists that have advo- 
cated an uprising of the common people, to seize a share of wealth, and to 
change society suddenly by means of armed force, as was attempted by the 



400 Getting a Living. 

communists who burned the Tuileries in Paris in 1871. Other socialists are 
evolutionary socialists, teaching that under the present system of competition, 
by inevitable forces of nature, a constantly increasing proportion of people 
will fall under deepening poverty, while wealth, through rent, interest, and 
profits, falls into fewer and fewer hands, until the state, to stop the cruel 
process of competition, will find it necessary to take upon itself a complete 
monopoly of production, with the result that all people will then live in ease 
and plenty. Of course the recognized economists, perceiving that compe- 
tition, while causing trouble like all other forces of nature, and requiring 
regulation by reason, is yet the only source of achievement and of character 
development, as shown in the preceding chapters, — have not accepted any 
of these systems of doctrine, though to a large extent they agree wath the 
gocialists in such reforms as factory legislation, inheritance taxation, and 
public ownership of street railways. 



CHAPTER XV. 
THE SHORTER WORK DAY. 

From Fifteen Hours Down to Nine and Eight. In Eng- 
land, from its greatest length of 12 to 15 hours a century ago 
the length of the work day has been brought down to 9 hours in 
most occupations — in some of them over forty years ago ; to 8 
hours, or a fraction less, in city building trades and some other 
industries ; and to under 6>4 hours among many thousands 
of coal miners. In America the work day has lately been 
changed from 10 to 9 hours in many occupations, and to 8 
hours in a considerable number of them, especially in work for 
the national and local government bodies. The cigar makers' 
union secured generally for its trade a shortening of the work 
day from 10 to 9 hours in 1884, and then to 8 hours in 1886, 
at which time the 8-hour day was also secured by a much larger 
aggregate number of workers here and there in different occu- 
pations, while the long days of many trades were shortened by 
an hour or more. Unions in the building trades, securing in 
large cities in the early eighties a change from 10 to 9 hours, ob- 
tained the 8-hour day in many large cities in 1890; in other 
places, about that time, the day was reduced from 10 to 9 hours. 
In the building trades a longer day than 9 hours is now the rule 
in very few towns of considerable size. In New York city, dur- 
ing the last four years, they have worked only 44 hours a week, 
stopping at noon on Saturday — a good custom that has become 
general with most trades in British cities, and that is now com- 
mon with many of them in large cities of America. The strong 
union of granite cutters issues no charter to a local union unless 
its members have the 8-hour day and a wage of at least $3. 
Among American furniture workers, in the unionized centres of 
their trade, the 8-hour day has lately become the rule, as it has 
been since 1898 with the main body of soft coal miners (those 

26 (401) 



402 Getting a Living. 

in the union), and in mines and smelters generally in the Rocky 
Mountain states. Gradually also it is being extended to bodies 
of workers here and there in many trades, being now enjoyed 
by nearly half the unionized workers in New York state. 
Nearly all the shortening of the day just outlined, except that 
in government work, was secured by strike pressure, though in 
perhaps most of the cases the threat of strike was sufficient. In 
1 90 1 the demand and strike of the machinists for a change from 
10 to 9 hours was successful at many places. Two years earlier 
union printers secured the 9-hour day without strike. Perhaps 
all the important mechanical trades in cities will soon have a 
work day not longer than 9 hours. For twenty years this has 
been the work time of the large class employed in city dry goods 
stores — from 8 to 6 o'clock, less one hour at noon. In fact, by 
the great spread of unionism during 1901-3 the 8-hour day has 
been made the rule in public work in scores of cities, down to 
very small ones, and in not a few of the smaller cities it has 
been secured by many or most of the unionized trades. 

The Earlier Steps in the Shorter Day Movement. A 
lo-hour day, from 7 to 6, ordered by President Van Buren in 
1840 in the navy yards, was then being adopted in large cities 
in mechanical trades, though in some towns of Massachusetts 
a maximum of 84 hours a week for carpenters is reported up to 
1851, 78 hours up to 1861, and y2 up to 1867 (72 up to 1880 in 
New Hampshire and New York). ' There was a minimum of 
54 hours for carpenters in Louisiana and New York by 1872, 
and of 48 hours in Missouri by 1880. The 8-hour agitation 
begmning in 1867 resulted not only in enactment of the laws 
described further on, but culminated in 1872 in strikes, by 
which carpenters and masons in New York city secured the 
8-hour day until deprived of it by the next year's depression. 
But until 1899, 10 hours (or 59 hours a week) was the work 
time of probably a large majority of mechanical workers in 
America as a whole. To shorten the work day has been with 
unionism, ever since its beginning, an object second only to 
raising wages. Even the 8-hour day was beginning to be con- 
sidered by some British unions in the early fifties, when the 
9-hour limit was coming within reach. Since 1884 shortening 
the day has been the main effort of the American Federation 



The Shorter Work Day. 403 

of Labor. The . Australian colonies lead the world in short 
work days, Great Britain coming second and the United 
States third. Australia's 8-hour movement began in building 
trades in 1856, partly because of the intense heat of the south- 
ern sun, and spread gradually until by 1892 the annual pro- 
cession in Melbourne of men who had secured an 8-hour day 
numbered 52 trades. The movement there since has continued 
to spread. In New Zealand the 8-hour day has become prac- 
tically universal outside of agriculture and transportation. 

A Longer Work Day is the Rule in Factories. Tending 
machinery mainly automatic is less exhausting than ordinary 
mechanical work ; besides, factories are easily lighted, while 
low value of product, and low pay for the grade of labor em- 
ployed, necessitate a long day to make wages adequate. In the 
Northern States of America 60 hours a week in cotton mills 
is now perhaps the longest work time in factories. Until about 
1885 the usual time was 66 hours. In 1895 a week of y2 hours 
was the rule in cotton mills in some of the Southern States. 
This is still the time in some mills, though 70 hours seems to be 
the time with a larger number, and 66 the time most usual. 
North Carolina manufacturers agreed in 1901 to run not 
longer than 66 hours, in a resolution against the proposed 
enactment of a factory law by the legislature then in session. 
By the United States labor reports of 1900, the longest time 
of work in recent years seems to be 75 hours by all Belgian 
flax spinners in 1885, and by some of the French as late as 
1896. The usual work times in 1900 for factory spinners on 
the Continent were 63, 66, and 68 hours ; in Great Britain 54 
to 56 hours, the latter being the limit by law. After 1904 
the maximum will be 60 hours in France. Rhode Island wool 
spinners worked 84 hours up to 1858. To work thus 6 days 
of 14 hours each, with half an hour off at noon, it would be 
necessary to begin in the morning at 6 and continue in the 
evening until 8 130. The English spinners worked 74 hours 
in 1804, 69 in 1833, and 60 in 1848 (after the lo-hour law of 
1847). Massachusetts, with 58 now, reduced the factory week 
from 66 to 60 hours by the law of 1874. This was the first 
effective law of the kind in America, and was the only one 
until after 1882. All the states having factories have such 



404 Getting a Living. 

laws now except several in the South. New Jersey and Ohio 
set the limit lowest — at 55 hours.^ The British law of 1901 
reduced the time to 55^ hours. It had long stood at 5654 
and 57. 

Working Time in Different Occupations. Sweat-shop 
garment workers, both in England and America, who are on 
piece work, and who in many cases work, eat, and sleep in the 
same or adjoining rooms, naturally stay at their tasks a long 
day, 12 to 16 hours. In household manufacture a long day 
was always the rule, work often being resumed after supper. 
Street car men in some American cities now work about 12 
hours a day, though the usual time varies from 9 to 11.^ Fire- 
men in Philadelphia breweries are on duty 84 hours a week. 
This is the usual work time, in different states, for some sec- 
tions of employees at cement works, blast furnaces, and other 
industries in which firing processes are kept in operation day 
and night. The men are on duty 12 hours a day for 7 days 
in a week, but are not constantly busy, and do not usually 
work many weeks without missing a day. Many breweries 
and steel works have changed to 3 shifts of 8 hours each. The 
street car men working the long weeks mentioned were not 
constantly busy like a mechanic. The custom of American 
farmers has always been to rise and feed their horses at about 
5 o'clock in summer, a few at 4, and to remain out till about 
sundown, 7 o'clock; but deducting time spent at meals, and 
in going to and from the field, they seldom get in over 11 or 
12 hours a day — often less. In many districts, under the in- 

^Perhaps the largest and latest body of information regarding the eight- 
hour movement, together with the soundest discussion of all its phases, is that 
contained in the New York labor report of 1900. 

^Street Railway Hours. In an important city of Pennsylvania, not one of 
the largest, a street car man in 1900 stated that he worked every week day 
12 hours ; then on one Sunday 8 hours, on the next 10 hours, and on the third 
12 hours. This makes an average oi 11% hours a day for seven days in the 
week. The U. S. Labor Department report for 1900 gives the week of one 
street car company in Missouri in 1882 as 78, 108, and 93, for lowest, high- 
est, and average; one in Maryland in 1893 as 60, 105, and 83 ; one in Penn- 
sylvania in 1885, employing 1125 men, as 72, 102, and 91. With street rail- 
way men a day of 14 to 17 hours was common up to 1886. A shortening 
of their day has been rapidly spreading from city to city with the growth 
of unionism during the last several years. 



The Shorter Work Day. 405 

fluence of the shorter day for common labor about towns, some 
farmers are now quitting early, working only about 10 hours. 

In Past Centuries in the apparently long days of labor, 
meal time was counted, and in out-door work the day was 
soon shortened by approach of autumn. Doubtless the rule 
then w^as to work about as American farmers and country 
mechanics have worked in recent times. For all kinds of 
labor in England up to 1750, though the morning start was 
very early, the time per week was not long, being shortened 
by a day off to go to the market town, or by a long rest at 
noon or at the close of the day. In some trades the custom 
was to rush dtiring four days and then to spend the other two 
days in drunkenness. Longer work days came with farming 
on a larger scale by employers with capital. The greatest 
length was reached in the factories of 1770- 1830, the effort of 
whose proprietors was to make the most use of their costly 
machinery. Yet in those days, reaching even 16 hours in 
some cases, meal time was doubtless counted. The longest 
weeks of actual work in textile factories, by the United States 
labor report of 1900 (covering several centuries as far as in- 
formation was available), were 84 in Rhode Island in 1858, 
78 in Massachusetts and Switzerland up to 1848, and 74 in 
England up to 1830. 

Highest Wages for Shortest Days. Wages have not va- 
ried according to the length of the work day. Generally they 
have been highest where the day was shortest.^ Wages de- 

^Long Days and Slow Work. The longer the day the more the rest that 
must necessarily be taken as the work is done. With a day of fourteen 
hours, workers would need to be very slow to avoid breaking down. A man 
who works every night, often the case with a person doing his own work, 
accomplishes something extra the first few days, but afterward weariness 
usually makes his product smaller than it would be if he worked only ten 
hours a day. Working seven days a week, as in some industries and many 
localities of Continental Europe, tends to make people very slow and very 
dull. Then they are resting all the time as well as working. It had the 
same effect on horses, in the old days of wagon transportation to the West. 

The Necessity for a Quiet and Thoughtful Sabbath is found in nature. 
The good effects of such a rest day appear in enlarged production not less 
than in improved character. This fact undoubtedly is one of many reasons 
for the marked and varied superiority- of Sabbath-keeping England and 
America over the Continental countries that make Sunday a day of work or 



4o6 . Getting a Living. 

pend less upon time than upon skill and speed, upon the diffi- 
culty of doing the work, and upon the machinery equipment 
for turning out a large product value. Wages in Massachu- 
setts cotton mills running lo hours were as high or higher per 
day than in adjoining states when the time in the latter was 
1 1 hours. The main causes of difference of pay in textile 
factories seem to be coarseness or fineness of goods made, 
quality and speed of machinery, and quality of material used. 
In an Alabama cotton mill running 70 hours a week the daily 
pay of women spinners is given by the above cited labor report 
at 20, 80, and 42 cents, for highest, lowest, and average (piece 
work) ; for men spinners the figures are 30, 47, and 41 cents. 
The lowest sum may be earned by children or by beginners. 
In a Massachusetts mill running 58 hours, women spinners 
earn 28c., $1.25, 83c. per day; in another mill men earn $1.81, 
$1.93, $1.87 per day; in a third mill men earn $1.00, $1.12, 
$1.04. The daily rates in an India mill, 66 or ^2 hours, sex 
not given, are 13 cents for lowest and 35 cents for highest. 
In an English mill, 56 hours, these rates for men are $1.38 
and $1.62; in a French mill, 66 hours, 97 cents and $1.02; 
in an Austrian mill, 66 hours, 81 and 95 cents. Time has 
practically nothing to do with the fact that in several building 
trades men in the large American cities get now 50 cents or 
more an hour for 8 hours, while men in small cities get but 
15 to 25 cents an hour for 9 or 10 hours. Speed and quality 
of work are factors, but the main cause of difference is the 
money value of the building to the man who has it erected. 
In small towns very little building would be done at 50 cents 
per hour, unless the workman did about twice as much in 
value (by quantity or quality) as the men at 25 cents. In the 

a holiday of unrestrained pleasure (though on the Continent laws prohibiting 
Sunday work are being extended from trade to trade, no Sunday manufac- 
turing being now permitted in Germany that can well be avoided). An 
official of the Pennsylvania Railroad, measuring carefully, in tons of freight 
handled, the work of warehouse laborers, concluded that "whenever labor 
had been employed on Sunday, after six days of previous employment, its 
productive value on the following Monday decreased not less than ten per 
cent, and as day was added to day the reduction of capacity continued to 
increase," both quantity and quality of work being lowered. {U. S. Labor 
Bulletin No. 37, page 1044.) 



The Shorter Work Day. 407 

building trades in cities, and in work about docks and ware- 
houses, the rate of pay at present is usually by the hour, and 
is high per day for the 8 or 9 hours worked. But employment 
is irregular. A convenient hourly rate is the rule also in rail- 
way shops and other concerns that make the day very short 
in dull seasons. Sometimes therefore a specially short day 
is undesirable to workmen, amounting to partial employment. 
Also in factories, piece work being the rule, faster or steadier 
work, or better machinery, is generally necessary to prevent 
a shortening of the day from lowering earnings. 

Hourly Wages and Selling Value of Hourly Product. 

Like wages, whose hourly or daily rate it largely determines, 
the length of the work day, as related to an amount of pay 
deemed essential, depends upon the proceeds from sale of prod- 
uct. Where employers of average success are regularly getting 
more than the lowest profit for which they would contentedly 
remain in business, they will usually pay in extra wages, espe- 
cially at times when wages are rising in other occupations, a 
large share of the extra profit to avert labor trouble, or will 
grant a shorter work day without wage reduction. If in the 
tenth hour as much work has been done as the average for the 
previous nine hours, a reduction of time to nine hours per day, 
at the same pay, would be an increase of wages by 11 1-9 per 
cent, unless the extra hour of rest increased the hourly prod- 
uct. But in any work not fixed in speed by steadily running 
machinery, less is done in the tenth hour, by reason of weari- 
ness, than in other hours ; and the work of the last hour, like 
overtime work at night, weakens a person for the next day.^ 
It is this weariness that causes accidents to occur two or three 
times as frequently in the last hour as in other hours — a fact 

'Bad Air and Too Much Heat are also very weakening on workmen. 
Aside from their health and comfort, the employer could well afford to 
maintain pure air and proper temperature for the additional work he could 
thus obtain. This matter, in small shops, is often neglected when left to the 
men themselves. Some people, to save heat, or to avoid cold as an unmiti- 
gated evil, seem to try in their homes to keep the same air all winter. From 
its rank impurity one might think sometimes they had succeeded. Appar- 
ently they do not want to know that fresh air heats more quickly, and holds 
heat longer. 



408 Getting a Living. 

proved by accurate European statistics. With the steady ma- 
chinery too, weariness, as a rule, either lowers the quality of 
the work done, or by frequent stoppage lessens its amount — 
often causing both these losses. Therefore, with the encour- 
agement of gaining their demand, with the intelligence to be 
acquired in leisure time, and by avoiding the weariness caused 
by working long days, a force of men might turn out as much 
value in product in nine hours as previously in ten, leaving 
wage cost per unit of output as low as before. It was for these 
reasons, apart from improvement of machinery, that daily out- 
put per worker was even increased by shortening the factory 
day from twelve and eleven hours to ten, with the result that 
there was a rise of wages. 

But if Men Were Not Overworked at Nine Hours, the 
last hour would differ less in results than in the other case, and 
reducing the time to eight hours would probably be an increase 
of wages to almost the full 12^ per cent. At $2 per day the 
rate per hour, 22 2-9 cents with a day of nine hours, would be- 
come 25 cents with a day of eight hours. If an average of no 
more and no better work per hour was done than before, the 
daily product would be reduced by one-ninth. There would be 
a falling off of one-ninth in gross sales per day, with an in- 
crease of one-eighth in wages per hour, making the smaller 
product cost as much in wages as the larger. If with the nine- 
hour day the profit of marginal employers were the lowest 
sum for which they would contentedly remain in business, and 
if by reason of plentiful supply of the grade of labor the union 
could not raise the margin by driving out weak employers un- 
able to pay high wages, there could be no shortening of the day 
to eight hours without reducing the daily pay. 

And Other Items of Cost Begin Here to Increase. For 
the reduced eight-hour daily product, the employer (unless 
business in general declined) could not reduce rent of land, 
interest on capital in machinery, or cost of advertising and 
other selling expenses. The share of these fixed costs falling 
on each yard of product would therefore be larger with eight 
hours than with nine. Cost of raw material and wear of 
machinery would be reduced the full ninth, and fuel nearly 
the same; while a little gas would be saved in winter, and 

V 



The Shorter Work Day. 409 

perhaps, by reason of lessened fatigue, there might be some in- 
crease of §:eneral carefulness, resulting- in less wear and 
tear. 
What Length of Day Will Give Highest Wages Per Hour ? 

In view of these facts it may be concluded with some 
certainty that the lowest cost of product, reaching, with the 
price lowering involved, the greatest aggregate of sales, and 
affording the largest total of net proceeds to divide with work- 
men in wages — is obtained in the longest work day through 
which the best average speed of continuous labor can be kept 
up without exhaustion to the close of the last hour. With 
such a day, any one hour paid for in wages yields as much in 
wage-paying product as any other hour. Making the day 
include all these hours the workman of average strength can 
bear without injury, reduces interest on capital, and other fixed 
charges, to the lowest point per yard of product that does not 
increase other expenses.^ 

What Speed of Work Yields Best Results? In ordinary 
occupations this longest day, of full average speed of labor 

^Running Fifteen Hours a Day Would Reduce These Fixed Charges 
per hour, but in the later hours the gain in fixed charges would be more 
than balanced by the extra labor cost of poor work done in weariness. Run- 
ning all the time, with a night and a day shift of men, as in mining (Sunday 
included everywhere in the far West until recently), reduces fixed costs per 
item of product to the lowest possible point. This continuous operation is 
necessary in navigation, railroad transportation, and brick burning; while 
it is sometimes profitable in the short summer season of northern saw mills, 
and in other industries for a time during busy seasons. But to people not 
long accustomed to night work, the weariness it causes is much greater than 
that of day work, reducing the workman's product per hour. Expense of 
lighting and extra danger of fire, except in underground work, must also be 
considered. It is well that these drawbacks to night work save to the work- 
ing class, except in special cases, nature's rest time of quiet and peace. There 
is hence a good reason, apart from others explained in the next chapter, for 
the customary union charge of a price and a half for overtime at night and 
on Sunday. Customers so anxious for quick work as to want it done at 
night should be willing to pay well for it. The weariness of the workmen 
next day brings loss to the employer also, especially when they are paid by 
time. And unless the hurried job is one that must be done quickly or not 
at all, it is not an addition to the business of the trade. It would otherwise 
be done later in regular hours, and would postpone a little further the dull 
season of partial employment. Wise employers know overtime is bad. 



410 " Getting a Living. 

to its end, is probably very nearly nine hours.^ Considering 
both the workman and his product, the speed of labor now 
usually maintained in well managed shops may perhaps be 
taken as the best. To make it faster would bring haste, and 
its waste of material, of equipment wear, of quality of product, 
and of workman's strength. To make it slower would weaken 
his concentration upon the work in hand, tempting him to talk 
or look out the window, and often lowering instead of raising 
the quality of his product. The best in quality, as well as the 

^That Change to Eight Hours Did Not Lessen Output, when made in 
1892 in the shops of the British war and navy departments, is asserted by- 
Clement Edwards in the Contemporary Revieiv for January, 1902, with quo- 
tations from the Board of Trade, and from the Secretary of War, to the 
effect that the change from 9 hours to 8 resulted in a saving of fuel and gas, 
in less wear and tear, and that the men soon did as much per day as before. 
He says that both in machine shops and in cotton factories in England more 
work is done now than was done a few years ago in weeks several hours 
longer. Perhaps this result is mainly due to use of better machinery, which 
in the longer day would turn out still more, and admit of higher wages ; and 
very probably the speed of navy yard men whose product was not lessened 
(in the desire to make the change a success) had not been so high as that 
prevailing with American manufacturers. E. Levasseur ("The American 
Workingman," page 126) mentions a British report of 1893 giving cases 
of piece workers who after a time earned as much in 8 hours as previously 
in 9 ; but he mentions also a British coal mine in which both product and 
wages fell. John Rae, in his book of 1894, "Eight Hours for Work," cites 
a number of cases in which as much work was done in 8 hours as previously 
in 9, especially a Salford machine shop employing 1,200 men; but in most 
of these cases there was a change from what an American would call the 
absurd British custom of trying to work half-faint for two hours before 
breakfast, starting at 6 o'clock — a custom that now is passing away. When 
by Montana law in 1901 the day was shortened to 8 hours from 12 in smelt- 
ing and from about 9 net in mining, the decrease of daily output per miner, 
and the increase in total cost of product, were both small. The men in 
smelting had previously been overworked, losing then much of the time paid 
for, and doing work of poor quality. The government reports, Mr. Mitchell 
points out, show an increase of product per man since the day of the soft 
coal miners was reduced in 1898 from 10 hours to 8. No doubt new ma- 
chinery and better management are factors here, but other important factors 
are increased vigor and contentment with the men, caused by shortening the 
day and by an increase since 1898 of 50 per cent in wages. The net short- 
ening was about one hour, as the ten included the time spent in going in 
the mine. Machine-mined coal was 16.19 P^^^ cent of all produced in 1897, 
but in 1900 was 21;. 15 per cent. 



I 



I 



The Shorter*Work Day. 411 

most in average quantity, is generally done when a man's mind 
is absorbed under voluntary pressure upon the work in hand. 
It is doubtful if slower work would be better for the health 
of the body. It surely would not be better for health of mind 
and character. In body, mind, and character combined, to 
maintain good fiber a man needs rest no more than he needs 
active and cheerful concentration upon some work useful or 
desired. 

Where Shortening the Day Must Bring Reduction of 
Wages. A shorter work day than about nine hours therefore, 
where that is the longest time of full average speed to the 
end, may hardly be established, where wages depend upon 
sales of product, without lower wages per day than would 
otherwise be obtainable. A monopoly, such as a gas company 
or a trust owning patents, would pay the extra sum per hour 
from its own net gains, not raising price above the point at 
which volume of sales brought net proceeds to the largest 
total; but in this case there would be no just way (page 351) 
for the union to raise wages materially above those of men of 
the same grade in other trades who might displace its mem- 
bers. In government work, where product or service is not 
sold in the common way, any short day, or any high wages, 
will answer that public opinion permits.^ But a private em- 

^An Eight-Hour Day for All City, State and National Employees is 
now perhaps a good example for the people as a whole to set before private 
industry. Such a rule in public employment strengthens the demand of the 
workers for the same rule in employment that is private. Every addition to 
the number of people that properly have the short day aids in establishing it 
as a custom, whose prevalence is evidence of general assent to its justice and 
propriet}\ A claim to what is enjoyed by others cannot well be denied 
without showing good reasons for difference. A public eight-hour day tends 
also to establish a preference for a reasonable amount of leisure rather than 
for more goods; and, as shown further on, money wages under a private 
eight-hour day would soon be adjusted as accurately as at present to market 
value of the labor product. The eight-hour day is now the rule in perhaps 
most of the public service, both in England and in America. 

The Inestimable Value of More Leisure. Wage workers, and employ- 
ers too, must have more spare time, and be less spent by their daily tasks, if 
they are not to shorten their lives, and if they are to make good use of the 
present abundant means for physical, mental, and moral improvement. The 
exhausted man must usually be excused for neglecting libraries and lectures. 



412 Getfing*a Living. 

ployer having no monopoly, even vc^ith pay by the hour, and 
v^ith no rate per day, a loss of an hour of time causing a loss 
of an hour of pay — would have to require nine hours if the 

He will do well if he does not want to be excused from church also. Ex- 
cessive weariness is an inducement to drink. There is good evidence that 
shortening the day has everywhere promoted temperance. When the British 
law of 1847 went into effect, shortening the textile factory day from 11 and 
12 hours to 10, there was a decided increase of effort at self-education, fifty 
night schools being open in Leeds in 1849. As to American miners the testi- 
mony is similar. The shortening of the work day, with the increase of hope 
and of energy it evokes, and with the active self-help in unionism necessary 
to attain it, — has doubtless been the main cause of the rise of British and 
American workmen in efficiency, intelligence, and capable citizenship — the 
essential elements of strength in a nation. In this way the shorter day has 
been largely the cause of the unprecedented progress of these two nations in 
wealth and enlightenment. It is with the shortening of the day that Conti- 
nental workmen are now improving in the same way. Dr. C. B. Spahr 
("America's Working People," 177) sees in the short work day a cause of 
the fact that only in Anglo-Saxon countries has participation by the common 
people in government been heretofore of consequence, since men working 
twelve hours a day are too dull and ignorant to make good use of the right 
to vote; and the cause of the shortening of the day he sees in unionism- 
There is undoubtedly much truth in this view, though Anglo-Saxon progress 
has been marked in states and districts knowing little or nothing of unionism, 
and not much of the short work day. In the present speed of activity in 
America, the welfare of workers in many industries requires a shorter day. 
Especially is it necessary to give working fathers and mothers more home 
life, and more pride in their children. Possession of these advantages by 
parents is most effective in saving children from idleness and crime, and in 
giving the rising generation the greatest development of body, mind, and 
character. It is easy to foresee the effect of these qualities on the nation's 
future, in wealth production, and in well-being of every kind. The buoy- 
ancy and efficiency of Australians is believed by many observers to be un- 
equalled, and to be due to their long enjoyment of the eight-hour day. 

Che Old Socialistic Danger Under the Short Day in Public Work. 
In accordance with the now generally commendable desire of the public as 
to all sound reforms, there is a conscientious willingness among the people 
to grant a short day in public work. But the main force here is perhaps the 
desire of politicians to please working class voters. High pay, short day, 
and easy work in public service are probably unavoidable now, where a 
clamorous voter has so much influence on the government as in America and 
Great Britain. What has been called "the government stroke" is well 
known in connection with public labor. Intentional slowness in work for 
the London County Council is referred to in an article in Popular Science 
Monthly for April, 1902. Geoffrey Drage ("The Labor Problem") tells of 



The Shorter Work Day. 413 

wages were at a high hourly rate, based upon large net pro- 
ceeds that were secured by using all his machinery through 
the longest daily time yielding product to best advantage. Re- 
cases in which the work of this body cost double the engineer's estimates. 
But where such conditions exist, to a noticeable extent, it is incorrect to call 
the government "a model employer," Such an employer does more than pay 
high wages and grant short days. More essential than his friendliness in 
this respect toward his men is his practice of getting habitually the highest 
return in product value for the money he pays out — the return well under- 
stood by both parties as bargained for in the labor contract. While he is 
pleased to see his men enjoying high wages, and actively promotes their 
welfare, his main reason for paying such wages is that he thereby attains 
in his product the maximum of quantity and quality, and the minimum of 
cost per unit. If instead of thus serving society, he simply served his own 
men, by giving them an easy berth, nature, by the beneficent forces of com- 
petition, would soon call him to account as an unfaithful steward (with 
whom faulty generosity is often a trait), and would pass his business over 
to other employers more capable, taking with it his men's employment. Yet 
it is too much to expect that public employees will work hard if they can get 
the same pay and more days without such effort. We who criticise might 
not bear such a temptation ourselves. The employer's function is neglected. 
Public opinion is simply permitting one form of corruption — allowing parties 
or officials to buy for themselves political favor from laborers with public 
money, for which full value in labor product is not received. With men 
already fed well enough for efficiency, higher pay does not bring better work 
unless better work is required to hold a position. Instead of conscientiously 
taking care of an employer too generous to be competent, the workers soon 
consider the high pay their due. Besides, in any exchange with a person 
able to bargain, who does not give as little as he can, whether of money or 
of work? 

Government Back Pay for Overtime. The $400 to $1,000 allowed to 
many letter carriers (at their $900 salary) for their overtime during the six 
years following 1888, the eight-hour law of that year not being generally 
enforced until after the passage in 1892 of an act requiring strict adherence 
to the eight-hour limit, — seems to have been little better than a political gift 
from the treasury, like appropriations for useless river and harbor improve- 
ments, so far as letter carriers accepted positions with the hours and salaries 
they started with, not relying on the overtime claim under the premature 
law of i888 as part of the consideration for their services. Expectation of 
future allowance of overtime pay is not to be supposed in the case of many 
thousands affected by the back pay provided for in the Senate bill of April, 
1902, intended to cover time in excess of eight hours per day, for all national 
employees except clerks, clear back to the eight-hour dead letter law of 1868. 
This law, the national supreme court decided in 1876, did not give the 
worker the claim of a contract, but was merely a direction to officials as to 



414 Getting a Living. 

duction of product and of income from sales, resulting in loss 
of interest and other fixed charges, would make him unable to 
pay the same hourly rate if his great factory were closed at 

the hours for which labor contracts should be made, which direction was 
seldom followed. A number of claims for overtime pay under state eight- 
hour laws have not been allowed by supreme courts, the claimants having 
accepted their wages as full payment, without protest as to hours when pay- 
ment was made. 

But if Raiding the Treasury is to be Permitted, workingmen have a 
better right to a share than other classes casting fewer votes and having less 
need. The fact that a man gets 50 to 75 per cent more pay in a government 
position than he could get elsewhere (proper if his government work has 
such a market value) is no reason why he should not press for more when 
lobbying from all sides is a profitable custom. It is not a part of the worker's 
function to inform the employer when he is paying too much. Public opin- 
ion, which is responsible for the whole trouble by not protecting Congress- 
men against clamorers, can check abuses by approval of such orders as that 
of President Roosevelt in 1902, forbidding employees to apply to Congress 
for increase of pay, and requiring such applications to be made to depart- 
ment officials. 

High Pay in Public Work to Raise Wages for All. Paying above the 
market rate for public work is advocated by some with the claim that it 
will tend to raise wages for all in the locality. This would probably be true 
if only those who earned the high pay were hired, as under the high pay of 
unionists, whose example leads non-unionists to demand more and do more, 
and their employers to give them better facilities for turning out work. 
Higher pay for public work would then be helpful also as public acknowl- 
edgment of the wage earner's right to encouragement in his effort to get all 
that marginal profits will admit, and in his effort to continue raising his 
pay by doing more. In that way he is cheerfully encouraged by the good 
private employer. But in public work high pay that is not earned, according 
to market value of the worker's product, has opposite effects. Workers are 
induced, not to improve but to neglect efficiency, in order to devote attention 
to seeking political pulls. Private wages are unaffected, it being observed 
that public wages are wholly different, not being based on product value. 
The rate of $4 for eight hours in the government printing office many a man 
is receiving who is far less capable than many a man receiving not over $3 
for nine hours in the union job offices of Washington and Baltimore. And 
employers too, instead of frankly admitting the workman's just claims, are 
led rather to resist them by pointing out the faults in his demand for public 
wages, and to seek gain for themselves by similar scheming, in which they 
can usually surpass the workman, and to his loss. Mr. Pearson, in his schol- 
arly book "National Life and Character," page 23, must have been influenced 
by Australian notions when he wrote in 1891 : "It is felt that, sooner or later, 
the ideal recognized by the state will be the measure for all ; partly because 



The Shorter Work Day. 415 

the end of the eighth hour. Piece work wages would be 
affected Hkewise. Trying to do as much in eight hours as 
had been done under full speed in nine would overtax the 
workman's strength and lower the quality of his product. 
Doing less would deprive the employer of the profit on the 
extra amount previously done, and leave fixed charges as high 
as before. But the employer might close with the eighth hour 
if he could take from each man's hourly pay the loss of profit 
per hour of product — a loss caused by stopping so early and 
reducing business done, but not reducing fixed costs. 

Large Investment and Uncertain Demand. To work 
fewer hours, therefore, below the greatest number through 
which speed can be maintained to the end (whether that num- 

otherwise the best men will all seek employment under the state, and partly 
because there will be an invincible reluctance to accept less than the largest 
employer gives." On that principle, extending the state's functions would 
be an easier and more tempting way of raising wages for all than the plan 
outlined in the chapter on higher wages from higher prices. One can imag- 
ine how much the state's high pay, for its few favored men, would affect 
the $1.25 a day of the cotton mill worker whose daily product, after deduct- 
ing rent, interest, and expenses, is sold by the employer for $1.35, or how 
reluctant Australians were to accept what employers could afford to pay 
during the hard times of 1893-97. 

In a book of 1893 on the distribution of wealth a young American econ- 
omist said that a government guarantee of employment to the willing (the 
"right to work") would secure for the lower laborers steady work and add 
30 to 50 per cent to their wages, and that, as there would be no surplus 
labor, it would raise wages for all. He forgot that both employer and em- 
ployee, when only poor land and poor business remain open, must remain 
idle or take small product and small wages (or must displace others), how- 
ever few the idle may be, or however high the profits and wages above 
them. 

The Cause of Labor Retarded, Not Advanced. The New York law 
of 1899, which added $150,000 to the state's annual expense by reducing the 
day to eight hours, with daily pay unchanged, in the easy work of tending 
locks on the canals, "has doubtless weakened rather than strengthened the 
cause it was intended to aid." (New York labor report, 1900.) Such was 
undoubtedly the effect of the national eight-hour law of 1868, coming twenty 
years before product values admitted of an eight-hour day in private em- 
ployment. To aid, and not hinder, the demands of the workers in private 
industry, high pay and short days in public work must be deserved and 
earned, and, by favoring conditions in the market for labor and for products, 
private industry must be ready for the change. 



41 6 Getting a Living. 

ber be nine, or less or more), workmen must take lower wages, 
or fail to get higher — per day, per hour, and per piece. A for- 
tune is spent upon a factory that it may run and earn profit. 
In dull times long idleness is sometimes unavoidable. Good 
demand for product is often short-lived and uncertain. Em- 
ployers cannot be censured for desiring to make hay while 
the sun shines. Sometimes a loss more serious than that of 
the fixed charges specified above is depreciation of value of 
machinery by reason of the invention of better.^ A new mill 
must quickly be made to serve its purpose, through the longest 
profitable day, or it may soon be out of style, and unfit to com- 
pete with others. Moreover, the common laborers in a force of 
men could probably increase their speed but little without 
injury to health, whether the skilled workers could increase 
theirs considerably or not. To slow laborers a long day, in 
their grade of work, is not harmful, and is necessary for earn- 
ing much in wages. With the employer here considered, noth- 
ing can be taken from profits. His are already the lowest for 
which he would continue in business; while it would be im- 
possible, by short day laws, by union demand, or otherwise, to 
lower marginal profits in all the places and occupations from 
which he might choose. To add to selling price, in order to 
raise wages per hour, would diminish sales and displace men, 
and would be made impracticable by refusal of some employers 
to enter such an agreement. Besides, inflow of new men 
would lower the wages if they were higher for the skill in- 
volved than the average in other occupations. 

How Shortening the Day Might Employ Idle Men. More- 
over, in addition to higher cost of production in the particulars 
just explained, there lies in the matter of machinery one seri- 

^Machinery Soon Becomes Antiauated. The unwillingness of British 
manufacturers to displace out-of-date machinery with the newest and best, 
has been one cause of their falling behind their American competitors. This 
fact was the main topic of discussion at the meeting in 1901 of the British 
Iron and Steel Institute. In 1893 M. Levasseur saw in a Minneapolis saw mill 
a system of handling logs which seemed to be highly efficient, but was told 
that though it was only two years old it would soon have to be displaced 
by a better system already in use. The machinery of an abandoned saw 
mill near by, only seven years old, was said to be too antiquated to use suc- 
cessfully. ("The American Workingman," 62.) 



The Shorter Work Day. 417 

ous defect (others are considered later) in the hope that a 
shorter day would divide employment with men now idle. 
During the eight hours no more men could work unless the 
employer enlarged his factory and bought more machinery. 
For this he should have interest on more capital, and profit 
on more risk/ while the product of the enlarged factory in 
eight hours would be no greater than that of the smaller fac~ 
tory in nine hours. This extra interest and profit would leave 
a smaller sum for wages, while there would be more men to 
divide it among, necessitating a reduction of the hourly and 
daily earnings of the old employees to provide work for the 
nev/. New m.en could not be put to work for the ninth and 
tenth hours alone, since they would scarcely have reached their 
full speed when quitting time came. One set of men might 
work effectively the first half day of five or six hours, and an- 
other set the second half day; but no one then would get in a 
full day. The old employees would give up a part of their 
work and wages to help those who had been idle.^ 

^Driving Out Weak Employers Unable to Bear Higher Wage Cost. 
Hence, under a shortening of the day the enlarged demand for capital in 
machinery would cause interest rates to rise rather than to fall as claimed ; 
and the same would be true of profits, since there would be an increase of 
the risk and difficulty of carrying on business. Though there were no idle 
men to hire, better machinery and better management would be required. 
Driving out the weaker employers in an industry, and throwing all its busi- 
ness to well managed concerns earning profits large enough to bear the 
higher wage cost without raising prices, could be brought about only by so 
unionizing all sections of workers that men in the industry considered might 
securely enjoy short days and high pay, while equally capable men, refusing 
to enter that industry, contented themselves with the long days and low pay 
of other occupations. Of course, sensible men would endure no such sacri- 
fice. In any grade of capacity, wages must rise for all together (pages 126, 
351). The quickest method of securing such a rise for a whole country 
would be to stop all kinds of poor business by emigration of those for whom 
positions at good wages were lacking. 

^This way of running short time with full force, instead of full time with 
short force, is common in dull seasons. It is the better way for the em- 
ployees as a class, taking away the support of none; and it would seem to 
be better for the employer also, involving no wasteful work by tired m.en, 
and holding the force together for a sudden inflow of orders, or for better 
demand later on. In a few cases this plan, or the giving of each man work 
for a part of the week, is arranged for by the union in its agreement with 
27 



41 8 Getting a Living. 

A Possible Method for a Large Shortening of the Day. 

Yet in many trades the remedy of the future for hardness of 
life caused by a long work day may possibly be this arrange- 
ment of two shifts working six to eight hours each. The 
■capital in machinery would then be employed to the utmost, 
not only in time, as in the long days of eighty years ago, but 
also in efficiency. None of the work would be lowered in 
quantity or quality by weariness, but continually the workers 
would be at their best, and the largest proportion of them 
would become able to operate complex machinery .and to en- 
gage in difficult processes. Such use of machinery, wearing it 
out quickly to be replaced with better, would lessen the amount 
of capital needed in any one industry, thus benefiting workers 
and consumers by lowering interest, or by promoting produc- 
tion of new things not previously used. Each worker in the 
industry concerned, to raise his pay to something near the 
present long-day rates, could then develop his highest speed, 
and by recreation in his ample time for rest might avoid injury 
to his health. It is pleasant to think of a society in which 
active people enjoy plenty of time. The earnings of a couple 
of hours given up from wages seem a trifle when compared 
with the benefits of the change. What is money good for but 
to buy benefits and enjoyments? And for well paid men how 
else could the wages given up buy so much? Dispensable 
goods and chattels are nothing compared with leisure hours 
of buoyant strength. ''There is no wealth but life." 

Where Employers Might Willingly Cooperate. A move- 
ment for a considerably shorter work day on this plan might 
be favorably received by an employer where enough men could 
be hired for the two shifts, and where the change did not inter- 
rupt his business. By this arrangement the workers would 
not only ask no more pay per hour than their product provided 
an income for, but they would put the employer in position to 
utilize his capital more fully than before, and to deliver goods 
with unprecedented promptness. Below the point at which 
the shortening of the day begins to diminish product — it is 

local employers. Men are not then tempted by need to accept work as non- 
unionists, but they tend to lose self-reliance and to depend unduly on the 
union. 



The Shorter Work Day. 419 

allowable to repeat — the only ways of shortening it further 
are to accept less daily pay, or to refrain from demanding an 
increase per day that might otherwise have been secured. A 
change to nine hours' work for ten hours' pay may be practi- 
cable in the latter case. That is now the most popular way 
of securing a raise of wages per hour. Only in flush times can 
profits spare anything to add to wages without stopping mar- 
ginal production, and thus placing on wages the depressing in- 
fluence arising from presence of idle men. Generally, capital- 
ists watching for chances to enlarge old or start new businesses 
keep marginal profits near the lowest point.^ 

^Throwing on Interest and Profits the Extra Cost of Production under 
a Shorter Day. Mr. Sidney Webb says ("Problems of Industry," 128) that 
employers oppose an eight-hour day because they expect it to raise wages 
per unit of product, by diminishing output per worker, and by absorbing the 
idle, whose presence keeps down union demands; that wages thus raised in 
all trades would be the same as a tax on net profits, which could not be 
shifted by raising prices, since those prices yielding most profit before the 
tax was incurred would still yield the largest balance afterward. That to 
avoid, under this general increase of labor cost, a diminution of profits, 
transfer of capital from producing things requiring much labor would pro- 
ceed far enough to raise their prices from scarcity, and would increase pro- 
duction and lower prices of things requiring less labor; there would be a 
shifting of demand, but a utilization of as much labor as before, with per- 
haps a production of as large a total quantity of all goods. That if total 
product proved smaller, the loss would fall on interest and profits, while 
workers would get as much as before, and from fewer hours of labor. That 
Sidgwick and Marshall agree that capital would be saved as at present 
though interest were much lower, as proved by the experience of savings 
banks. It is by an eight-hour law for Great Britain that the short day dis- 
cussed is thought of as established. Reasons are given to show that foreign 
trade would become adjusted to changes of production, and that capital 
would not be driven abroad, its opportunities at home still remaining the 
best. But the scheme is fanciful. It is highly improbable that under any 
possible unionism numbers could gain such power over mind and money as 
materially to change a country's production and consumption of goods ; or 
that in the present openness of all lands to industry, capital would fail to 
avoid in some way any considerable tax ; or that by securing employment for 
all by shortening the day unionism would have even as much power as it 
now has when all are employed under a naturally brisk demand. 

The Matter-of-Fact View seems to be that among any people sufficiently 
free and enlightened to seek the benefits desired from an eight-hour law, 
conflicting interests of diflferent trades and localities would make an approach 



420 Getting a Living. 

Shortening" the Day So Far Has Left Profits Undisturbed. 

By diminishing the worker's fatigue, and by raising his effi- 
ciency through use of improved machinery, the increase of 
his product has balanced both the successive shortening of 

to universal enforcement impossible ; and that where reduction of hours les- 
sened output the employer would lessen total wages accordingly, if not by 
lowering the hourly rate, at least by diminishing the number of hours hired. 
By the latter method, which is practically incontestable short of outright 
socialism, he would limit his product to that quantity on which higher labor 
cost could be balanced by higher price. No less effectively than with prices 
of ordinary commodities, do supply and demand fix the rates of interest and 
of profit. To but a small extent, and perhaps to no extent at all not clearly 
just, can net interest or net profit be taken by law without causing some- 
where an overbalancing loss, both to the public and to the wage earners. 
However, Mr. Webb simply discusses an eight-hour law's possibilities. He 
expects the eight-hour day to come in suitable trades separately, and to 
cause little or no diminution of product. Some of the best British unions 
indicate their knowledge of natural forces by demanding eight hours re- 
gardless of the effect on ivages. The Australian building trades willingly 
accepted a reduction of pay when their day was shortened to eight hours in 
1856. Raising wages per quantity of work is probably no easier by shortening 
the day than otherwise. Work proving insufficiently profitable is soon drop- 
ped. The American cigar makers gained their eight-hour day so early and 
so successfully because under piece work the reduction of output was bal- 
anced by reduction of daily wages. Later they succeeded in having their 
piece rates increased. Likewise the granite cutters, in their change from 10 
hours to 9, and later in their change from 9 hours to 8, accepted 25c. less in 
daily pay, and each time secured the 25c. again at the end of the year. Both 
these trades, It is to be noticed, used then little or no machinery. Most of 
the fifty or sixty Australian trades submitted to reduction of pay to obtain 
the eight-hour day. 

A Satisfactory Reduction of Hours was that in the Minneapolis flour 
mills in 1902, when wages were being raised in many industries. Demands 
for a change from 12 to 8 hours were denied. In view of the competition of 
mills elsewhere running 12 hours; but the men accepted the employers' offer 
to pay $2.80 for 8 hours to 464 millers then receiving $3 for 12 hours, 120 
extra millers being required. The pay of some of the other workers was 
reduced accordingly, but without need for extra men. The total Increase 
of wages was about $50,000 a 3^ear. (Outlook, Oct. 11.) In 1903 the Pull- 
man Company, whose employees are now mainly in unions, granted a 
change from 10 hours to 9, at the same pay, raising total wages per year 
about $900,000. When by the Utah law the day in mining and smelting 
was changed to 8 from 10 hours (perhaps about 9 net), pay per day was 
reduced 23 per cent, the number of men was Increased 30 per cent, and 
labor cost rose 10 per cent. (Indus. Com. XV. 768.) 



The Shorter Work Day. 421 

the day, at least down to ten hours, and the repeated rise of his 
daily wages. In piece work, under a rate unchanged, shorten- 
ing the day lowers wages accordingly, beyond the effect of 
intenser effort by the operative. In the shortening of the day 
to eight hours in the building trades in large cities, employers 
have preserved their profits by paying by the hour, by requir- 
ing faster work, by hiring none but efficient men, and perhaps 
most of all by raising prices. In the case of buildings, not to 
be made elsewhere and shipped in, price is raised easily, and 
in a city of rapid growth the raising of prices may not diminish 
the amount of building sufficiently to leave men idle in times 
of activity.^ Work on railway trains is adjusted to short time 
per week, with fairness to both parties, in the matter of wages, 
by the system of payment per mile or per trip. Perhaps in 
all the trades shortening the day from ten to nine hours, little 
or no diminution of product has been noticed. Whether there 
is some diminution may not be after all a serious matter to 
the employer generally, since if he cannot preserve his profits 
by raising prices, or by lowering wages, he can do so effec- 
tively by taking up the slack in his methods, by hiring better 
men, by driving them a little faster,^ and not by undertaking 
the less profitable work. In the latter particular, though he 

^The Cost of Building in New York city was estimated in 1897 to have 
risen forty per cent during the preceding fifteen years. (Levasseur, 131.) 
Since 1897 the cost of building in Michigan has risen fully a third, but more 
by reason of higher cost of materials than of higher wages. No doubt there 
has been an equal rise over the country generally. Some carpenters in 
Chicago said that after the shortening of the day they had to work much 
harder than before. (Spahr, 178.) But some contractors said the speed 
of work had not increased. (Levasseur, 129.) If London carpenters and 
bricklayers, as commonly believed, do purposely very little work per hour, 
to make jobs for more men, the increased cost of building may be a reason 
why the London working class are so poorly housed. The high rents, and 
brisk demand for houses, it would seem, ought to bring a supply from Eng- 
land's immense fund of idle or poorly invested capital. 

^After the change from 10 hours to 8 in Montana mining, the men were 
required to use their own time, instead of the company's, for going in and 
coming out of the mine, a process occupying nearly an hour. In granting a 
union demand for an increase of a dollar per week, the employer might get 
back the dollar, and get another besides, by requiring a record of time spent 
on each piece of work — a change that, without the union demand, he would 
hesitate to make. 



422 Getting a Living. 

does not maintain his aggregate of business and of profit, he 
does maintain the profit rate. So far as faster and steadier 
work is secured, the burden of maintaining a shortening of 
the day falls on the workers. So far as methods are im- 
proved and better machinery adopted, the burden falls on the 
employer. Generally a share is thus borne by each, as in the 
case of raising wages by union demand (page 298), and in 
both cases there is with each side a strong inducement for 
progress. Hence, as a rule, the shorter the day and the higher 
the pay, the greater is each side's efficiency, and the better is 
the outfit of machinery. When by extension of the British 
factory law about eight years ago the sweated laundry women 
of London, too poor and ignorant to save themselves, were 
rescued from toil of inhuman length per day, machinery was 
at once put in that kept prices and profits unchanged. This 
has repeatedly been the effect of laws against child labor (page 
188). Aside from the building trades and a few others, which 
possess a local monopoly, neither shortening of the day nor 
raising of wages seems to have thrown a noticeable burden on 
the public in higher prices. As a competitor in the world 
market for cotton goods, England, having the shortest days, 
fears Massachusetts most, coming next in length of day, and 
having highest wages of all ; and fears Russia least, having the 
longest day and the lowest wages. 

But People Would Have Fewer Goods to Enjoy if short- 
ening of the day were not balanced by increase of working 
speed or of steadiness. This would be true whatever the im- 
provement of machinery, if the improvement would have come 
under the longer day also. Considering the need and desire 
of most people for additional supplies, and the smallness of a 
worker's product value in such occupations as farming and 
textile manufacturing — these occupations employing in the 
aggregate the bulk of the people — and considering the prob- 
ability that to most of these people increased speed would be 
more harmful to health than a moderately long day, — it seems 
likely that shortening of the day below nine or ten hours will 
long be confined to occupations carried on in a high key of 
skill or intensity, or in which labor's product value is so large 
as still to afford good wages after reduction of output. People 



The Shorter Work Day. 423 

in other occupations, perhaps, would rather work long days 
as at present than to get along with fewer goods. Shortening 
of the day for these must come from inventions enabling them 
to enlarge their product, from the same enlargement through 
increase of their efficiency for their own occupation, and from 
openings for them in new occupations of a somewhat higher 
grade. Yet everywhere, perhaps, determined effort should 
be made to shorten the day of steady work to a limit not over 
ten hours. In such work more hours will yield very rarely a 
larger result in the long run. 

Shortening of the Day Will Come Gradually in Trades 
Suited to It. So far therefore as further shortening of the 
day takes place, it will come about gradually as heretofore, in 
those trades suited to it, mainly by desire and demand of the 
workers, but largely by realization among employers that nat- 
ural conditions make a shorter day better for all concerned.^ 
It was nature that shortened the school day to six hours. A 
longer day, it was found, spent the nerve force of teachers and 
pupils, and made the desired results of instruction positively 
smaller. The customary short day of bankers and profes- 
sional men, working under mental strain, was found by all 
concerned to yield best results. A shift of only four hours 
on duty, followed by eight hours off, is willingly conceded to 
firemen on steamships, such an arrangement being found 
necessary to keep up steam and to save men from breaking 
down. For the same reason night work on daily papers was 
long ago limited to about seven hours. Whether steel works are 
run on two shifts or three will depend likewise on the desire of 
the men and on comparative results ; so will adoption of Profes- 
sor Alarshall's suggestion of two eight-hour shifts in single 
shift industries. The short day in building trades has been suc- 
cessful, not only because of their local monopoly, but also be- 
cause it spreads over a longer time an amount of work that 
seldom lasts all the year. Repeated shortening of the factory 

^President Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, says that *'the 
Master Builders' Association is on record testifying to the mutual benefit of 
the eight-hour day, and urging its general adoption. Employers of labor 
who have the eight-hour day all bear testimony to the general good resulting 
from the change." Montana mine managers soon found the short day best. 



424 Getting a Living. 

day has come because it was found that strength was saved, 
intelHgence promoted, and that product and wages were even 
increased, though there has generally been some diminution of 
output for a while at first. 

Nature Will Prevent It Where It Would Result in Harm. 
But the case will be different when reduction of hours 
is carried so low as to begin to make product smaller, and 
hence to lower daily wages, beyond the hidden lowering of 
yearly wages that doubtless has already taken place in short- 
day trades through discontinuance of the less profitable kinds 
of work. Until further cheapening of production, accom- 
panied by mental and moral elevation, leads people at low 
wages to prefer more leisure to more goods, they themselves 
will object to shortening of the day.^ Among people fairly 
well supplied, additional leisure well spent would doubtless 
be more beneficial, to them and to society, than additional 
goods, especially if care were taken during the short day to 
guard against ''the pace that kills. "^ Therefore the general 

^In the change by law of women's factory time from eleven to ten hours 
in several New England states about twenty years ago, the operatives were 
not unanimous in demanding it, many being doubtful as to whether product 
and wages (at piece work) could be maintained. In Massachusetts there 
seemed to be no loss. She was alone in limiting the day to ten hours from 
1874 until after 1882. (F. A. Walker, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1890.) 

^A Waste of Life by Working Too Fast is probably taking place in 
America now, and to a serious extent. In many kinds of work a man past 
forty or forty-five is unable to keep up. From some parts of the work in 
Jewish tailor shops in New York, women have been driven out by inability 
to bear the task system. Whether by a speed too fast, or by a day too long, 
the closing of a man's period of efficiency at forty-five, instead of fifty-five or 
sixty, diminishes not only his aggregate of satisfaction from life, but also 
his aggregate product, lessening his own and society's increase of wealth. 
(Spahr, 155.) The greater moderation of life in Europe is often mentioned 
favorably. For a time we Americans may win the whole world of achieve- 
ment, but waste the nation's life in the process, and hence lessen results for 
the long run. Extremes either way must be avoided, whether of eagerness or 
of deliberation. The demand of workmen for the highest wages and the 
fewest hours adds to intensity of effort, in their necessity of earning their 
wages in order to retain them, and in the employer's necessity of keeping 
down labor cost with skillful management. Especially is a shorter day, 
together with much additional regulation by law, necessary to avoid the 
present waste of life in unhealthful and dangerous trades. Statistics prove 



The Shorter Work Day. 425 

practice now among workingmen of demanding a shortening 
of the day where conditions are favorable, instead of higher 
daily wages, is to be commended. In this way they choose 
more leisure, not more goods, as a share in the distribution of 
the benefits of improved production. In the present keenness 
of all classes to perceive loss and gain, and in the present pre- 
vention of high wage monopoly by easy movement of labor 
from place to place and from trade to trade, nature guarantees 
that shortening of the work day to a harmful extent will not 
come to continue. 

The Most Popular Argument for Shortening the Workday, 

one which is generally urged by labor leaders, is that short- 
ening the day will employ the idle, will make surplus labor 
scarce, and hence will enable unions to enforce demands for 
higher wages. It is said that in a trade of 150,000 men a 
change from 10 to 9 hours would make jobs for 15,000 more; 
that with an employer having 1,000 hours of work a change 
from 100 men at 10 hours to 125 at 8 hours would increase 
demand for labor 25 per cent. President Walker asked, ''Why 
not work but i hour a day and increase labor demand 900 per 
cent?"^ The extra demand would be for more men, not for 
more labor. The employer would still have only the same 
1,000 hours for which to hire. His product, whether produced 
by few or many, has a value he cannot change, fixed by demand 
and supply over a field comprising perhaps the whole world. 
By this value wages are held inflexibly, and it is fixed by what 
buyers think about it, not by what the seller claims they ought 
to think. They are also producers and sellers, having the 
same difficulties he has, and hence are not to be asked for help. 
Though every worker in the country stood ready to strike, not 
only will no man not partly supported by charity ever get more 
pay for making an article than it will sell for, but he will not 

that In Great Britain the death rate per thousand among men is nearly twice 
as great In the Industrial as In the farming districts. In the pottery trade 
the death rate is over three times that of clergymen and gardeners. 

'F. A. Walker, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1890. W. Macarthur, The Forum, 
Julyj 1 901. This argument is further treated at the beginning of the next 
chapter. 



426 Getting a Living. 

long get either of the shares falHng by current rates to rent, 
interest, and profit. If places are to be made for 15,000 new- 
men, the 150,000 (but not the 15,000) must do one-tenth less 
work, and the wages of the 150,000 must fall unless the mar- 
ginal employer's profits were already sufficient to admit of a 
rise of wages per unit of product. 

To Improve the Employer's Market and Raise Prices. 
Hence, recognizing that the employer's profits cannot be taken 
in wages if he is to continue in business, and that even by 
monopolistic action through a trust of all employers in a trade 
its prices cannot be arbitrarily raised without narrowing de- 
mand for its goods and throwing men out of work, — those 
desiring to shorten the day in order to employ the idle include 
in their argument the standard of living theory of wages. The 
one "or two hours of extra leisure given to the worker by a 
change to an eight-hour day will awaken in him and his family, 
it is said, desires for many additional comforts — books, music, 
better clothes, better homes, etc., w^ith which the leisure may 
be occupied — and hence will increase demand for these, for 
the labor to make them, for the machines and materials their 
making requires, and so on until the whole field is included in 
increasing demand, in rising prices and rising wages, in im- 
proving plants to produce on the largest scale at lowest cost, 
and in a general prosperity unprecedented.^ The fallacy here 
is similar to that explained in the chapter on higher wages 
from higher prices. The plan is to give everybody more goods 

^Great Expectations from Shortening the Day. The American writer 
who has been the champion of the eight-hour movement, and of the standard 
of living theory of wages (Professor George Gunton), wrote about fifteen 
years ago that as a direct and immediate effect the general adoption of an 
eight-hour day in the manual trades of this country, except domestic and 
farm labor, would absorb all the unemployed in the United States, Great 
Britain, France, and Germany, even without expansion of market, making 
employment for 3,552,059 more adults. (Quoted in Rae's "Eight Hours for 
Work.") The computation was probably correct for a division of employ- 
ment and of nvages, as in the practice among regular employees on daily 
papers of sharing work and wages for a day each week with a substitute, 
and of sharing his unpaid idleness. But the expectation among workers in 
the eight-hour movement is that from scarcity of men wages will even be 
raised Not many of them are ready for a shorter day at wages positively 
lowered, and most of these expect the rate to be restored or raised later on. 



The Shorter Work Day. 427 

by producing fewer of them. The effect of an extra hour of 
leisure, in elevating the consumption of 150,000 machinists, 
with their money wages unchanged, could scarcely make in 
five years a noticeable increase of demand for machinery — no 
increase at all unless the higher consumption was of goods 
whose making required more machinery than did the goods of 
the lower. The employer would do well if he kept his shop 
running without his profits for five weeks. A commodity is 
produced for those having purchasing power already when it 
is offered for sale, not for those who may have purchasing 
power in a few years if certain social changes hoped for come 
to pass. A fall of wages — from reduction of output per man 
with no rise of prices — would overbalance the extra leisure and 
make consumption by the 150,000 smaller, to be raised no 
higher than the previous level by the added consumption of the 
15,000 who had been idle, since both groups together would 
have no more money to spend than the first group alone had 
before. A sure increase of consumptive demand could come 
only through getting more by the 165,000 to spend. They — 
at least with the help of their wives — could contrive to spend 
it all, whether they had more leisure or not. Instead of need- 
ing extra opportunity in which to study out new wants, most 
people are unable to hold their wants back to the level of their 
incomes, which are the vital factor. By return of better times, 
as in 1898, more employment and more pay could be obtained 
by reason of naturally increasing demand and rising prices, 
but not without such good times except by turning out more 
product per man. In the latter case there would be no places 
for the idle, whether the greater output came in ten hours, or 
by faster speed in nine, and whether or not there were ready in 
the shops plenty of capital in machinery and materials for extra 
men to work with. 

Wages and the Standard of Living. In China wages are 
lowest of all, it is said, because the Chinaman can live on least ; 
and so on, passing up the scale of wages to Russia, Germany, 
England, and America, more is paid in each country than in 
the next below because the worker's standard of living is 
higher, and because he must have his usual comforts or he 
will not work. Hovel life makes hovel wages. Of course. 



428 Getting a Living. 

in this theory cause is put in place of effect. The crowded 
Chinese Hve on Httle because they cannot get more, as milHons 
of them have starved to death because they could get nothing, 
which is surely for none of them a standard of living. Yet 
here, as elsewhere, effect in turn influences cause. Living on 
barely enough to support life weakens body and slifles hope, 
degrading a people, and disabling them for desiring and trying 
to earn more; while as a nation's living improves, with com- 
forts and leisure, its people grow in efficiency of body and 
mind, desiring and producing more and more goods, and rising 
in civilization.^ 

The Vital Factors in the Problem. But whatever the ad- 
vantages of a high standard of living, drawing out best effort, 
a man's welfare still depends upon the product he gets. The 
farmer whose income for a year has been cut down half by 
drought can send no grievance committee, or make no de- 
mands, on the sanction that with his standard of comfort as a 
self-respecting citizen he and his family will not put up with 
such a living. He can only ask of the winds, which some- 
times strew the ground with fragments of his property. The 
case is the same with men hired at wages. As many a one 
has experienced, the fact that a man's standard requires $2 
a day is no bar to a drop of his income to nothing when hard 
times take away the market and profits of his employer. The 
showing made by labor speakers of rise of daily wages after 
shortening of the day would doubtless be far less favorable if 
they compared earnings per year. Wages depend most vitally 

^"The large production consequent upon the increased consumption of 
wealth by the masses makes all classes actually richer." (Gunton.) The 
word consequent here is correct in the effect of increased consumption, when 
wise, to increase strength, intelligence, and enterprise. But of course, apart 
from increase of income due to a better selling of unchanged labor or prod- 
ucts, one's production must increase first to provide something extra to con- 
sume. Production waits on what consumption promises to be — on market 
demand; but far more literally does consumption wait until what one con- 
sumes has first been made and brought into his possession. 

Wages and Cost of Producing Labor. Of equally desirable men taken 
to a distant mine it would be true, as Mr. Gunton teaches, that the wages 
required to meet the demands of the needed worker least willing to go would 
be the cost of producing the labor, and would have to be paid to the others, 
though willing to go for less. But ordinarily the labor power is already 



The Shorter Work Day. 429 

upon the product value the worker creates, above cost of ma- 
terial and other expenses. When the railway fireman passes 
to the right side of the cab as engineer he gets a dollar or two 
more per day than before, not because the engineer wants or 
needs more, but because his work is worth more in the labor 
market, his ability being scarcer in proportion to demand 
for it. The German doubles his wages by coming to America, 
where cheap land, abundant raw materials, and better machin- 
ery (not scarcity to raise prices and wages) double his labor's 
product value. The farm laborer getting $12 a month and 
board in the mountain counties of Pennsylvania gets $20 and 
board, and by working no harder, when he goes to the rich 
prairies of Nebraska. In each case the desire, and usually the 
effort, for more pay are as strong before the moving as after- 
ward. The Germian's need for it at home is much greater, for 
living is more expensive there than in America.^ The standard 

produced and for sale, without access to a better market, and hence, above a 
bare subsistence, is not affected by cost of production but only by supply and 
demand. Mr. McNeill says, "Nothing short of a revolution can suddenly 
change their habits and ways of living." A change is very easy when it 
no longer pays the employer to hire them, as it is when the farmer's crop 
fails. To attempt a revolution would close more factories, and in a scramble 
to divide what little food was on hand it would not be the workers that 
fared best. 

^Where the Standard of Living is Important. It is to prevent a fall of 
wages that the standard of living is important. Capable employers do not 
try to preserve profits by lowering wages if profits can be preserved in any 
other way. Being deprived of their usual supply of comforts leads men to 
work discontentedly and inefficiently, and to seek other employment. The 
standard of living has, to a less extent, the same influence as a factor in 
forcing a rise of money wages when, by reason of a general rise in prices, 
more money is required to buy a family's usual supply of commodities. This 
was one reason for many cases of advance in wages during 1901-3, especially 
the advance of about ten per cent in 1902 by many railway companies. Yet 
generally the main reason is that an advance is justified by prices and profits 
in the trade considered. Watchful workmen demand all the pay that mar- 
ginal profits can bear, whether their standard of living is threatened or not. 
When an industry's profits are unfavorable therecan be no rise in its wages, 
whatever the rise in costs of living. This is momentously true when in a 
panic supplies begin to run short, as would have been the case if the Amer- 
ican monetary standard of value had dropped down by half, as was feared, 
from the gold to the silver basis, by reason of the government's inability in 
1893 or its inability or refusal in 1896 (if Mr. Biyan had been elected). 



430 Getting a Living. 

of living has little to do with the matter, except to lead one to 
desire and strive for better things, a part of which striving is 
to demand wages as high as trade conditions will permit. 
These various conditions combined are what fix the wage rate, 
together with the worker's efficiency. Change of his efficiency 
— doing more or better work — or going to another place, or 
into another trade, change conditions for him.^ Whenever by 

to hold the silver up to the gold value by exchanging gold for it. Prices 
would have risen greatly, but the closing of factories from uncertainty 
would have brought wages lower. 

^How Far the Motto is True. 

"Whether you work by the piece, or work by the day, 
Decreasing the hours increases the pay.'' 

The assertion in these favorite lines of American unionism is true of pay 
per day so far as decreasing the hours, by lessening fatigue and promoting 
efficiency, increases the laborer's daily output, as was the case in shortening 
the twelve-hour factory day. It might be true of pay per hour, though the 
day were shortened by half, if absence of fatigue from labor were not then 
outweighed by distracting effects of too much leisure. This does not mean, 
as was formerly claimed, that long days at work are necessary to keep men 
from drinking and from other temptations of idleness, but that a man devot- 
ing but half the day to his work might have his mind set mainly on other 
things. By nature it seems that one's work or business must always remain 
his chief temporal concern, if it is to amount to much. There are no indi- 
cations that the command, "Six days shalt thou labor," will ever lack en- 
forcement; or that it will ever mean less than And use most of thy 
strength, despite the socialistic dream of an elysium with three hours for 
work and all the remainder for play. Increase of a worker's product value 
must usually be in quantity and quality of the article he makes. Rise of 
selling price above the ordinary level is balanced by its fall below at other 
times. Benefit from permanent rise of a commodity's price would soon fall 
in rent to owners of the source of limited supply. Consumers would get 
less of it for what they had to exchange, fewer men would be employed to 
produce it, and those retained would get no more pay than the average for 
their grade in other occupations. 

The Drudge Who Works Longest is Paid Least because so many offer 
his grade of service that its value falls until to earn even the low pay many 
hours are required. Disagreeableness or unhealthfulness of work can raise 
the pay for it only by making scarcer those who apply for positions. By 
union demand, better pay may be obtained for most of the work done in 
such an occupation, the remainder being discontinued, and the margin thus 
raised. The men left idle, being the least desirable, cannot displace the 
others by offering to accept less pay, and may do better in other kinds of 
work. Fortunately, many of those who make no effort to escape from de- 



The Shorter Work Day. 431 

shortening the day the daily product of men's labor is dimin- 
ished, their daily pay will be smaller, however scarce and well 
organized the workers may be. And diminution of product 

grading drudgery are being driven from it by its transfer to machinery. 
That the pay is low for the most necessary labor, such as farm work and 
washing, while it is high for the work of producing luxuries, such as de- 
signing rich costumes, is surely not to be complained of. If farm laborers 
had to be paid like engravers of ornamental stone, what would a common 
dinner cost? Nature has arranged this by fitting only for common labor a 
thousand where artistic talent is given to one — by making necessaries so 
plentiful that the product of a worker growing them is worth but little. 

Doing Least and Getting Most. The head superintendent, who begins 
work latest and stops earliest, is not paid most because he works fewest 
hours, but because his grade of ability is so useful and scarce that both the 
high pay and the short day are included in its market value. Such is the 
case too with the many office employees who work short days and enjoy such 
other privileges as vacations without stoppage of pay, but who, far more 
than the worker docked for lost time, must bear the burden of giving satis- 
factory results — a more serious matter than putting in hours. To but a 
slight extent, too, are the office men less subject than the common workers 
to market rates of pay — are not so few in business as to escape such a rate, 
which anyhow would be an advantage as often as otherwise ; nor by getting 
more than other employers would pay them are they more likely than com- 
mon workers to gain unduly. The latter are quickly "fired," but they are 
just as quickly hired. So far as one's salary is based on his needs 
for support of his social station (the case to some extent with a few clergy- 
men and public officials), it is paid, not for services, but for the substantial 
advantage of observing proprieties — of securing for a city or a church cred- 
itable representation. Also, in many positions of trust and emolument, as to 
which the methods of election or appointment do not admit of bargaining, 
the salary is adjusted to needs in being placed high enough to secure the 
incumbent's best service, by relieving him from the necessity of devoting 
thought to care of personal affairs. To consider such needs, and to consider 
the effect of higher pay to secure higher ability, may be wise in public em- 
ployment of any grade, and also in private industry (page 145). These 
considerations, together with the additional one of securing fidelity by re- 
moving temptation and by quickening the sense of honor, are prominent in 
the case of book-keepers and cashiers, who may be obtained at monthly 
salaries ranging from $i6 to $500. 

But the Principle of Supply and Demand is Present in all these cases, 
Mr. Hobson will notice. With salaries here, as with wages in general, a 
certain amount is paid because what is wanted cannot be obtained for less 
(the want including sometimes gratification of a desire to appear liberal). 
The difference is that the things bought are less open to view than is the 
ordinary mechanic's labor. Also, for basing the physician's or lawyer's 



432 Getting a Living. 

will not onl}^ lower wages in the one industry, but by narrow- 
ing market, and by checking accumulation of capital, it will 
check the building of factories to employ other men, and will 

fee on ability to pay, as well as on importance of the service, there usually 
exists, behind the apparent kindliness, the solid reason that price must be 
made satisfactory in order to collect at all, and to secure the person's custom 
again. Such lowering of price to ability to pay is common in many occu- 
pations, often being forced also by the knowledge that if one does not do 
so a competitor will. 

The Living Wage Again. Socialistic w^riters refer to the physician's 
or lawyer's code of charges as being based on what is proper for support 
in his station — a living wage. In America this code, varying according to 
the professional man's ability and to his customer's money, differs from 
other price lists mainly in imagination. Subject none the less to supply and 
demand is the British barrister's fee, fixed in minimum by law and entered 
publicly with other costs of suit. No more of his services are bought than 
to the demanding buyers are worth the price. Of course so far as a rate 
set as a living v/age is paid further than supply and demand for labor, 
and for the product, would otherwise carry it, it is a tax for the benefit of 
those receiving it, falling on taxpayers in the case of government em- 
ployees, and would fall on consumers in the case of a monopoly that raised 
prices to balance it, like the hard coal industry, many of whose employees 
seemed in 1902 to have given up readiness to take their labor where it 
would bring most, and to be relying on an appeal to the public for a living 
wage. The trouble is that under exchange such a tax for private benefit is 
only for a few. The socialistic state, while it lasted, might pay a fixed 
w^age to all if it first gathered a store to draw on when product, fell short. 

Objection to Being Subject to Market Pay indicates lack of ability to 
do and find work as well as others, or to sell one's labor for its full price. 
It is allowable to appeal for the help of public opinion in securing more 
pay (though the rate be high already, as with skilled men striking) on 
the ground that the demand is justified by the market for the kind of labor 
and its product; or if present rate is low, on the ground that the market 
will be made to justify it by the balancing of higher pay with better work 
from the men and better management from the employer. But the ground 
that more pay is required for a decent living — the living wage idea — can- 
not rightly, or with hope of success from it, be urged unless either the first 
or the second ground exists and the workers are in a bad plight from which 
they cannot escape unaided. Whatever their plight, to ask for m^ore than 
by changing their work and changing the industry the supply and demand 
conditions of bot^i the labor and product market can be made to justify (as 
v^'ith the London dockers in 1889), would be to ask a charity dole, which 
could not long be collected except in w^ork for the government (hardly from 
a monopoly), and v/ould then be little less degrading than other doles. 

Pleading Poverty, as was done (and overdone the commission said) 



The Shorter Work Day. 433 

thus diminish employment and output of suppHes for society 
as a whole. 

Demand Consists Not of Wants, But of Wants Backed 
by Goods to Exchange. The central truth here is that de- 
mand for labor in any line arises less from people's need or 
desire for its product than from their possession of other com- 
modities or services to exchange. A workman's leisure and 
desires are nothing unless he has the wherewithal. A farmer 
does not raise wheat because others are hungry; he has 
enough to do in taking care of himself. He raises wheat be- 
cause others have something to buy with, and thus afford him 
means of gain. In a plan by the men of one trade to work 
fewer hours and divide up employment, in order to make idle 
men scarce and hold back their labor for monopoly wages, it 

by the anthracite miners in 1902, may be allowable to prove that the annual 
wages are below the market rate — below the pay of other workers of the 
same grade ; but urging poverty in a plea for a living wage, apart from 
the rate set by supply and demand in the market, injures the case when the 
workers, like the miners mentioned, have been getting more than do half of 
the country's population, the average wage in manufacturing being $435 a 
year, and the average for all common labor being not over $250. Much 
was said before the anthracite coal commission to the effect that proper sup- 
port of a family required about $600, as If, by pressure of public opinion and 
unionism, the mine operators should pay such a wage and tax it on consumers 
in monopoly price, and equally good workers earning far less outside should 
not take the jobs of the favored few thus subsidized. It is well for public 
opinion to assist miners to get all their service is worth, under market prices 
for labor (page 153), but it is with those worst off that charity must begin, 
if we are to come to that, and with those all that charity can do is to assist 
them to do work worth more In the market, or to sell their labor where Its 
price Is higher. Under civilization the only way to get rid of the law of 
supply and demand Is to make paupers of those for whom it is set aside. 
Even in the tribal family, and in the primitive village, this law ruled. In 
mutual protection the family and the son each paid for what was re- 
ceived. 

The living wage idea has entered minds whose thinking Is usually sound. 
"The worker has at all times the undoubted right to a sufficient wage, when 
honestly earned and judiciously expended, to support his family In conform- 
ity with national standards of living." (M. Cokely.) He has a right to 
all he earns, no matter what he does with it, and no matter how much it Is ; 
but he has no right to any more, no matter how greatly his family needs 
it. What the needy worker has Is a right to some of the first public assist- 
ance' toward being enabled to get the average living by earning it. 
28 



434 Geftjng a Living. 

would be necessary for them (even though they could prevent 
inflow of new men to get their high pay) that other trades, by 
working more hours or using better machinery, turned out a 
larger product than before, if all of this one trade's previous 
product was to be carried off at the higher prices. The demand 
for the product of one trade consists of purchasing power in 
the product of men in other trades. Use of money obscures 
but does not alter the fact that the exchange is of goods for 
goods. Excepting cases of production beyond capacity of the 
market (discussed in the next chapter), largest return to one 
man for his labor depends not only on largest quantity of his 
own product, but also on largest quantity of all other men's 
products, that they may have the most with which to buy of 
him, increasing demand for his goods and raising their price, 
and that what he buys of them may be cheapest and most 
plentiful. It is when crops and prices are good in the West 
that farmers buy largely of manufacturers ; when crops or 
prices fail they buy little and pay slowly. All the goods pro- 
duced for sale are demand — purchasing power — in the hands 
of sellers, and the same goods are the supply for buyers, who 
in the aggregate are the same people as the sellers. Adoption 
at one time of an eight-hour day, for every wage worker in 
America, whatever desires might arise from leisure, would 
diminish, where output was lessened, the demand from each 
trade for the goods of all other trades, and hence would dimin- 
ish the total of wages paid, whether the hourly rate fell or rose. 
In this it is assumed that there would not be enough unem- 
ployed men to make the total of hours worked as great as 
before. The only ways to get more are to produce more or sell 
higher. For wage workers a shortening of the day below the 
length of greatest output has the opposite of both these effects. 

An Eight Hour Day by Law, for many or all trades, advo- 
cated for twenty years or more by the socialists and labor 
unions of the Continent, has also been urged since 1889, with 
some power at times, by many labor unions in Great Britain. 
The need for regulating labor is greater there, in the crowded 
condition of industry, than in any other country. Old customs 
of seeing that work people were provided for, still prevailing 



The Shorter Work Day. 435 

•to a large extent on the Continent, broke down long ago in 
Great Britain, under the British employer's necessity of selling 
abroad against world competition ; and the modern business 
practice arose of following gain to the utmost, leaving the 
workers Vs'hen idle to their own self-help in unionism, and to 
their modern ability to get new employment. The British 
ten-hour law of 1847, changed at different times, and now 
placing the limit at fifty-six hours per week, is for women and 
young persons in factories ; but since their stopping prevents 
the entire mill from running longer, the law in effect limits 
the day for men operatives also. The main grounds for such 
laws — namely, that dependent women getting daily bread by 
daily toil cannot refuse to work an unreasonably long day, 
when required to do so by the employer, and that to avoid 
being undersold the best employers must work their help as 
long as do the worst — have lately been urged in favor of ex- 
tending the British factory laws to the scores of unregulated 
and sweated trades, and in favor of enacting an eight-hour or 
nine-hour law to be applied to both women and men in any 
trade whose workers choose it by ballot, and for which investi- 
gation by the Board of Trade shows it to be suitable. This is 
called the trade option plan for an eight-hour law. The agi- 
tation reached its height in 1893-94. 

Eight-hour Laws Already in Force in Some States. The 

many American legislatures and city councils that by law have 
made eight hours the day for public work are simply exercis- 
ing their right as one party in the labor contract involved, 
being restricted only by constitutional requirements as to 
spending public money. It is for them that the work is done. 
The factory laws also, in many states, limiting the hours of 
women and children, have almost universally prevailed as 
constitutional, because in the weakness of these persons they 
are to some extent the wards of the state, needing legal pro- 
tection for their own and the public welfare. But a wide 
departure from the rule was made in Utah's law of 1896, 
which prohibits grown men from working more^ than eight 

^Constitutionality of an Eight-Hour Law for Men. By this law It is 
enacted that the time of work "shall be eight hours per day, except in cases 
of emergency, where life or property is in imminent danger;" and that "any 



436 Getting a Living. 

hours a day in mines or smelters, even though a longer day 
may be desired by both employer and employee. The grounds 
here, which include those of the laws for women, are that men 
living by their daily labor, and unable readily to find new posi- 

person, body corporate, manager," etc., violating the ''provisions of this act 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor." Being contested as unconstitutional, on 
the ground that it deprived men of liberty and property, and that it was 
class legislation, this law was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United 
States in 1898. The court said that "the state still retains an interest in the 
employee's welfare, however reckless he may be," and declared the act "a 
valid exercise of the police power of the state." For this reason of the em- 
ployee's (and hence of the public) health, and for the reason that employer 
and employee do not stand on an equality in liberty to contract or not, the 
state has power to interfere with freedom of contract among grown men. 
{U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 17.) 

Such Laws in Different States.— Colorado's law of the same kind was 
declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court in 1899, but the Colorado 
state constitution (different from that of Utah) was so amended in 1902 
as to permit the law's re-enactment for many trades. Georgia's law of 
about ten years ago, forbidding employment in cotton mills of any one 
longer than sixty-six hours a week, but providing no penalty, would doubt- 
less be, if contested, unconstitutional as to men. Nebraska's law of 1891, 
fixing the day, when not agreed upon otherwise, at eight hours for all except 
farm and domestic labor, and requiring double pay for overtime, was de- 
clared unconstitutional in 1894. The Illinois law prohibiting employment 
of women in factories for more than forty-eight hours a week was set aside 
about the same time, because a woman's right to liberty and property in- 
cludes the right of free contract, because the law applied without reason to 
some occupations and not to others, and because it lacked connection with 
public health or welfare. No doubt this law would have stood in Illinois 
if it had forbidden something clearly objectionable, such as work by women 
in mines, or after 12 o'clock at night, though on the ground of the state's 
guardianship over women and children it would be unconstitutional in the 
four states in which women have the full right of voting — Colorado, Utah, 
Wyoming, Idaho. Yet if the reduction of time was not too great, it might 
seem that the Illinois court was disposed to be conservative, especially if the 
women themselves (not the men wanting their work) desired the law, as 
is usually the case in England with factory women. The Massachusetts 
law of 1874, limiting factory labor to sixty hours a week for all persons 
under eighteen years, and for all women of any age, was upheld as a proper 
health or police regulation. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 17.) The Utah 
quotation above, from the nation's highest court, shov,rs that in the American 
states as a whole the question has practically been settled in favor of labor 
laws. This national decision will influence the state courts, yet they must 
decide differently where the state constitution is held to require a different 



The Shorter Work Day. ^2>7 

tions, are often unable to refuse to work as the employer 
dictates ; that under the necessity of meeting competition a 
minority of the employers, or of the workmen, can set the 
hours for the majority; and that as their own health or safety 
and the public welfare are jeopardized, men desiring to work 
long days for extra gain need in some occupations legal pro- 
tection from themselves. Laws similar to Utah's, to prohibit^ 
men from working over eight hours in mines and smelters, 
have also been enacted in Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming, New 
jMexico, ]\Iontana, and Arizona, while earnest agitation will 
probably lead to their enactment soon in Great Britain and 
France. In Austrian mines the day is already fixed by law at 
nine hours. An eight-hour bill for mines was debated in the 
British Parliament in 1893, but the matter has not since been 
carried so far. Such a measure passed one of the French 
chambers in 1902. The Continental nations heretofore have 
not followed so closely as Great Britain and America the rule 

decision, and in the absence of a difference of constitution may determine 
whether a law coincides with the n^eds and desires of the people. 

Where Courts are Too Conservative, growth of public opinion will 
widen their views. This growth has taken place in Massachusetts, and 
still further in England, in whose complex industry many labor laws are 
needed which in the simple industries of agricultural states would be super- 
fluous or t}'rannous. "We have no disposition to criticise," said the United 
States Supreme Court in the Utah case, "the many authorities which hold 
that state statutes restricting the hours of labor are unconstitutional. . . . 
The question in each case is whether the legislature has adopted the statute 
in exercise of a reasonable discretion, or whether its action be a mere excuse 
for an unjust discrimination, cr the oppression or spoliation of a particular 
class." In 1902 laws limiting hours for women were upheld in Nebraska 
and Washington, and the Illinois decision was cited as the only one to the 
contrary. {Bulletin No. 44.) Ohio's ten-hour law for railway and mine 
workers, set aside about ten years ago, would doubtless stand now. 

^The State in Relation to Labor, in his book of 1882 under this title Pro- 
fessor W. S. Jevons, confirming earlier teaching of John Stuart Mill, and 
confirming the practice in factory laws, established as orthodox economic 
doctrine the limitation by law of freedom of contract where there are no 
available means other than law to prevent injury- to the physical, mental, or 
moral health of work people. Law for women and children was chiefly 
meant, but the admissibilit}- was recognized of legal restraint on the labor 
contract of men. An able discussion of this subject is given in Webb's 
"Problems of Industry," 1898. 



43^ Getting a Living. 

to except men in laws limiting freedom of contract; but the 
only law of importance besides the Austrian that does not thus 
except men seems to be the French factory law of 1900.^ In 
Australasia the awards under the compulsory arbitration laws 
limit men to eight or nine hours in many occupations; and in 
1 901 New Zealand extended her general factory law to men, 
limiting the factory day for all workers to eight hours. Great 
Britain enacted a law in 1864 to prevent men in potteries from 
being overworked four days of the week and left idle the re- 
maining two. Under the Railway Regulation Act of 1895 the 
British Board of Trade has compulsorily shortened the day of 
many thousands of men workers. The Home Secretary has 
the same power (not yet exercised it seems) with regard to 
men in any manual labor dangerous to health or limb. In 
America the mining laws described above were the first that 
limited to any important extent the working hours of men, 
but laws designed for such limitation existed before. In 1886 
and later different states limited the day to twelve hours for 
employees of steam and street railways. New York in 1893 
limited brick makers to ten hours, and in 1900 limited drug 
clerks to seventy hours a week. In 1895 and later different 
states limited bakers to sixty hours a week. For reasons of 
public health and safety, all these laws for men would doubt- 
less be constitutional, but difficulty of enforcement has made 
them comparatively unimportant in results. The New York 
law as to bakers was affirmed by the supreme court in 1902. 
Excepting these cases just specified, agitation by American 
unionists for eight-hour laws for men has been confined to 
public work, as to which they have been successful in many 
state legislatures and city councils, as with the national Con- 
gress. At different times, especially from 1886 to 1894, in- 

^New York labor report, 1900. Russia had an unenforced ten-hour law 
for men in handicraft trades as early as 1785, and in 1897 made the limita- 
tion effective, though the day permitted is long. Austria, for some years, 
has limited the day for men, but eleven hours, and by ministerial order 
twelve, are permitted, (U. S. Labor Bulletin, Nos. 28, 30.) Her nine-hour 
law for mines was enacted in 1899, after a strike. These two countries 
have never had an approach to the liberties of England. It was the radical- 
ism of Victoria that enacted in 1883 the first eight-hour law for men in 
mines. New Zealand too has had such a law for some years. 



The Shorter Work Day. 439 

definite hopes of securing an eight-hour law for all trades 
have arisen among a few American workmen of socialistic 
ideas. ^ 

^History of American Eight-Hour Laws. The laws of many states, 
enacted about 1870 and since, to the effect that eight, nine, or ten hours 
(some states fixing one time and others another time) shall constitute a legal 
day's work, usually excepting domestic service and farming, are of little 
consequence, applying only where the hours have not been agreed upon in 
the labor contract. The hours, in contracting to labor, are almost universally 
understood from the custom of the shop or the trade. Such laws, as public 
expression of the desirableness of a shorter day, may further the movement 
by influencing opinion in its favor ; but very few people know of their exist- 
ence, and some of these are turned against the movement by viewing the 
laws as undue concessions to the labor vote. The national law of 1868, 
fixing eight hours as the day in all manual work done for the national gov- 
ernment, was passed by Congress in response to a general labor agitation. 
Despite President Grant's two proclamations, of 1869 and 1873, that wages 
should not be reduced accordingly, this law was only thus enforced by 
officials, or was entirely ignored. 

The Reason of Non-Enforcement was Not Official Perversity, as some 
writers seem to claim, but was lack of a supporting public opinion, without 
which many laws rightly become dead letters. Not only was this law a too 
wide and sudden departure from the ten and eleven hours then worked in 
private industry, but under the impracticability in government employment 
of balancing decrease of time with increase of efficiency, together perhaps 
with absence of willingness to do so, such a reduction of time without 
reduction of wages, with workers already paid well, would have been favor- 
ing the few by taxing the many through a gross departure from market 
rates (page 414). A California eight-hour law of 1868 for public work 
was evaded and nullified in the same way as was the national law. By a 
law of i888 Congress applied the eight-hour day to letter carriers, with 
some reason, it would seem, since the day was then dropping to nine hours in 
many trades, and in a few to eight. By a law of 1892 Congress forbade 
government officials to require or permit manual labor for a longer day 
than eight hours except in emergency. Since then the eight-hour day has 
come to be closely observed with manual workers whom the government 
employs directly. The laws of 1868 and 1892 were intended to include also 
the work done for government contractors; but by reason of doubtful con- 
stitutionality, and of inability to consider the time of labor on many supplies 
bought in market or made to order, the law has not been generally applied 
to contractors (especially subcontractors) except those in building, and these 
have not been prosecuted for its violation. (New York labor report, 1900.) 

The Government Contract as a Lever for Securing Eight Hours in 
Private Industry. By means of a bill passed by the lower house of Con- 
gress several years ago, but not yet passed by the Senate, the labor leaders 



440 Getting a Living. 

Sufficient Reasons for Limiting Hours by Law, in the 

case of women and children employed in large factories, are 
now perhaps universally admitted to exist by economists, few 
or none remaining of the extreme laissez-faire or let-alone 
school of the Manchester^ manufacturers and their defenders. 

seek to impose the eight-hour limit, not only on all work done to order for 
the government, but to carry it as far as practicable in the case of supplies 
made for contractors, so that the latter must be eight- hour goods, somewhat 
as with union carpenters the materials must be union-made. The labor 
leaders seem to think that enactment of this bill would go far in extending 
the eight-hour rule; that as in one shop goods made for the government 
cannot be kept separate from goods made for other buyers, eight hours would 
prevail for the shop's work as a whole. But this is very improbable, unless 
the eight-hour day was already near for other reasons, or unless the shop 
was so fully occupied for the government as to make other customers unim- 
portant. If shortening the day caused a considerable loss to the employer, 
bidding for government orders would be confined to a few eight-hour con- 
cerns producing for it alone, and charging it monopoly prices, while other 
concerns proceeded as at present with the hours fixed naturally by the rela- 
tion of the different trades. The companies engaged chiefly in building 
vessels for the navy say that as the proposed law's effect would be to limit 
all their work to eight hours, it would prevent them from getting foreign 
contracts. 

New York State's Similar Law was held by her supreme court in 1900 
to apply only to construction work (not to products) done to order for the 
state separately, whether by the state directly or by contract, and not com- 
plicated by connection with production for general sale. By late New 
York decisions as to wages and hours, given in Chapter XIX., an eight- 
hour law that caused a waste of the government's money, by excluding it 
as a purchaser from the low prices of the general market, would probably 
and rightly be unconstitutional. A United States district court in California 
decided in 1898 that Congress had power to fix the day at eight hours, 
either for direct employees or for contractors, and to punish violations of 
the rule. But this case did not involve waste of public money and other 
matters that make the later New York decisions more important. 

High Pay and Costly Work in Navy Yards. One reason why ships 
built in its navy yards have cost the government considerably more than 
those built for it by contractors is that navy yard workers have not only 
the eight-hour day, and pay above market rates for their labor, but have 
also 7 annual holidays with full pay (or 2V2 times full pay for working), 
and have now, with full pay, a vacation of 15 days. (Indus. Com. XIX. 
846.) It is not surprising that the forces of unionism strove so eagerly in 
1902, and with success, to induce Congress to have some of the ships built in 
the navy yards. 

^But the Manchester Argument that free competition, each person for 



The Shorter Work Day. 441 

Also for the sweated trades in cities, extension of factory 
laws, down to the shop employing but one person, seems to be 
the only remedy for fearful suffering. Half-starved women 
and ignorant foreigners, working twelve to fifteen hours a day 
at garment making in scattered tenement shops, are totally 
unable to hold one another to reasonable hours by forming 
unions. Neither can the hours be regulated by agreement 
among the employing contractors, competing intensely for the 
work given out by large manufacturers. Nothing but law will 
suffice. The best effect of its rigid enforcement would be 
that, by preventing sweated people from bartering their life 
blood for a half living, their kinds of business would be driven 
into factories using improved machinery, employing the same 
people, and in ten hours turning out a product sufficient to 
admit of decent wages. For toys now made by the sweated, 
and sold incredibly cheap, more would be paid or they would 
not be produced. The vicious circle would be broken — bad 
work making low pay, and low pay making bad work. Fear of 
losing trade to sweat-shops would not depress wages in large 
factories. Relief from bitter struggle would gradually raise the 
sweated to the plane of self-help, by unionism and otherwise. 

himself, would be best everywhere, with the weak and ignorant and all 
others, is still presented as formerly by capitalistic opponents of factory 
laws and of unionism. Though the motives of these ma)^ be selfish, yet the 
instinctive aversion to limiting freedom of contract seems allowable, and 
often commendable, among people not familiar with large scale industry. 
Apart from such industry, and from the helpless sweated workers in cities, 
restriction would generally be an evil. (Chapter XIX.) The universal 
approval mentioned is among economists, 6i whom perhaps all have per- 
ceived the necessity for factory laws and unionism. Prof. A. S. Bolles, In 
his article in N. A. Re^vie^ of March, 1903, makes perhaps the nearest ap- 
proach, by an economist of to-day, to full Indorsement of the older notions 
as to sufficiency of the employer's self-interest, and as to uselessness of union- 
ism. It seems that his view of the solid necessity for unionism is obscured 
by the many welfare Institutions of large corporations; and that his view 
of the solid merit of unionists is obscured by the murderous boycotting in the 
recent coal strike — also by such excesses as the demand of the cash register 
company's employees for removal of a non-union hinge from a door, and 
for withholding towels from a non-union washerwoman. As Inabllit\^ to 
see through such abuses Is probably the trouble v/ith most of those who dis- 
like unionism, the latter's supporters have in reasonableness, and In obe- 
dience to law- a sure means of winning many friends. 



442 Getting a Living. 

The advanced women workers, capable of unionism, in British 
and New England textile factories, are those first lifted from 
the slough of despond by legal shortening of the day.- 

For Grown Men Also Limitation of Hours by Law seems 
necessary in most or all of the American cases outlined above, 
and especially with railway employees, that their excessive 
fatigue may not endanger the lives of themselves and of the 
traveling public. No doubt the present mild laws of the states 
on this subject might well be strengthened, in view of the 
irregularity of railway hours, of the heavy loss of life from 
accident, and of the inability of the strongest unions to bargain 
on an equality with great corporations. In the large increase 
of regulation by law of many industries involving exposure to 
dust and to poisonous materials, there ought probably to be a 
shortening of the day by law for men. In Great Britain the 
death rate for file makers and lead workers is double that of 
coal miners, fishermen, and railway engineers. But only 
where there is no other adequate remedy for an evil has lim- 
itation by law of freedom of contract been accepted by econo- 
mists as admissible. A practice of caring for one's self is still 
the only basis of independence and capability. The claim of 
Mr. Webb and Mr. Lloyd, that the government, in the present 
era of democracy, is only the executive committee of the work- 
ers themselves, does not apply to duties which the individual 
cannot safely delegate ; and besides, adherence to constitutional 
principles is necessary to prevent resort to tyranny by the 
majority. 

Self -Help is Better. If blast furnace workers in the United 
States must toil twelve hours because a few furnace owners 
hold all competitors to that time, limiting the day by law 
would be allowable, as a last resort. But those workers would 
be made more capable men, and they and their descendants 
would fare better in the future, if by union demand, and by 
finding other jobs, they themselves secured the reduction of 
time, assisted simply by public opinion.^ It is well that the 

^Webb, Problems, i6o. The sweating system is further discussed in 
Chapter XVIII. 

"Their need for a shortening of the day was strongly stated in Political 
Science Quarterly, 1899, p. 704, by John Graham Brooks. A strike among 



The Shorter Work Day. 443 

American coal miners have reached the paint of success in 
unionism at which they prefer to fix hours by their own agree- 
ment with employers' associations. (Chapter XXVII.) The 
settled opposition of North of England coal miners to an 
eight-hour law is due to the strength of their union, and also 
to the characteristic dislike of the .English to any legal re- 
striction not absolutely necessary. In America, in strikes 
against unreasonable hours the favoring pressure of public 
opinion is now very strong. The loss involved in securing 
just demands by strike is usually balanced by the gain in man- 
hood. The union vigilance necessary to hold rights once 
gained makes stronger men for the future, while a law to lean 
upon makes future men weaker. It is to be hoped, therefore, 
that the spread of unionism, with its influence over unorganized 
trades, will restrict to the minimum the necessity for laws to 
limit the hours of men. The factory laws for women provide 
for the trades that are sweated. At furnaces and mines union- 
izing is feasible. Where workers are too scattered for unions, 
they are usually protected by custom, and by ability to move. 
Retail stores in all parts of the country are now coming to be 
closed at reasonable hours. With grocers and meat dealers in 
Michigan cities, the closing time was changed in 1902 from 8 
o'clock to 7, excepting Saturday and railway pay days. United 
demand by unions of clerks, supported by public opinion, is 
sufficient to maintain the new custom. Some leading retailers 
of dry goods gain extra good will from employees and public 
by closing at noon one day each week in summer. Securing a 
shorter day in this way for stores is very much better than by 

them in 1902, for an eight-hour day, was compromised with a slight increase 
of wages. As the indications are that their demands will be made again 
and again, they will probably secure the needed improvement of conditions 
by their own efforts, as coal miners and street railway men have done so 
successfully during the last several years. Despite the loss to the workers, 
securing demands by strike will generally be better than by law in perma- 
nent results. It does not seem that a long day gives a competitor any advan- 
tages that an employer's men desiring a short day could not balance with 
faster, better, and more cheerful work, and (so far as this proved insuffi- 
cient), by accepting a slight reduction of pay. The reduction would not be 
a defeat, weakening their upward pressure, under the effect of more leisure 
to increase independence. 



444 Getting a Living. 

law, as was done in Victoria in 1899, though applying the Mas- 
sachusetts factory law to stores provided a needed safeguard 
for child workers. There is little danger that one store's long- 
er hours by choice will soon be imposed on all other stores by 
necessity ;^ or that, amid the present unionism of workmen and 
their ability to move, the man choosing to work more hours for 
more pay will soon be forced to work the extra hours for the 
lower pay he had before. The increasing desire of the public 
to relieve people from all unnecessary hardship bids fair to 
answer every need. Keeping a store open longer than the cus- 

^Sunday Laws. However, the laws of many states prohibiting or re- 
stricting the opening of barber shops on Sunday (affirmed as constitutional 
in New York and Minnesota but set aside in Illinois and Missouri) seem 
necessary to protect all the barbers from being compelled to keep their 
shops open on Sunday in order to avoid losing customers to the one or the 
few who by keeping open resort to unfair competition. Hence, such laws 
are desired by both employers and employees. Shaving on Sunday has long 
been common, and the temptation to postpone going to the barber shop until 
Sunday is strong. The case is hardly the same with photographers. 

The Religious Reason and Desire for Fewer Hours of Work. Reason- 
able Sunday laws, forbidding one to keep open a place of business, or to do 
himself or require an employee to do any work not to be excepted as a 
work of necessity, have existed in some form in most of the states from the 
beginning, and in some have lately been enacted in new statutes, such as 
Ohio's of 1898. These general laws, constitutional everywhere perhaps, and 
usually enforceable by reason of prevailing religious opinion, have now a 
strong additional support in the desire of every class that workers be pro- 
tected from having to work too many hours per week. For the sake of leisure 
unionism would approve (and could obtain if necessary) strict Sunday clos- 
ing laws and customs in many occupations, but, for reasons of religious 
liberty, would rightly object to such laws based on religious grounds 
where the religious opinion in their favor does not largely prepon- 
derate. Where it does thus preponderate the majority have a constitutional 
and moral right to secure by law the quiet Sunday they desire. Apart from 
the liquor and the am.usement business (and here a rest day for workers is 
one reason), enforcement of Sunday lav/s for the sake of morals and religion 
has not been strict for many years, and in most states seems to have almost 
passed away. Where opinion is strong enough to secure enforcement there 
is little need of it. In upholding liquor laws also the forces of religion and 
morality seem destined to have increasing support from the awakening of 
trade unionists to the liquor traffic's effects in weakening their cause. (Page 
189.) Another force for temperance may be a discernment by business men 
that for every dollar the liquor traffic adds to trade it eventually takes away 
two or more. 



The Shorter Work Day. 445 

ternary closing time, or resisting a proper movement to make 
that time earlier, will now drive away more customers who 
desire to relieve clerks and all others from unnecessary hard- 
ship, than it will gain from buyers who selfishly follow their 
own convenience, without regard to effects on others. Boycott- 
ing, to the extent of refusing to patronize a merchant who re- 
sists a proper early closing movement, is undoubtedly a duty. 
All this is a natural growth of opinion. Apart from the excep- 
tional trades mentioned, a wage worker still has a right to work 
twenty- four hours a day if he and the employer so choose, while 
even in those the employer can v/ork so long himself. There 
are plenty of forces besides law to prevent either from doing 
so. The state assumes that they are men, able to take care of 
themselves, and by thus leaving them alone makes them able. 
It is liberty, voluntarily restrained by a sense of right and ex- 
pediency, that develops the highest type of manhood. Only 
where that sense is lacking, without prospect of reaching ade- 
quacy, should dependence be placed on law. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

IRREGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT. 

The Reserve Army of Idle Men. The argument that the 
shorter work day would provide employment for the idle, com- 
mands attention from many well meaning persons outside the 
ranks of wage earners.^ The idea of a "growing residuum" of 
idle men, of a "reserve army" of the unemployed (introduced by 
the socialists),^ is dwelt upon pathetically. One noted labor 

^Unemployment Figures. From all British trade unions making returns 
the largest proportion of members not at work was 10.2 per cent December 
31, 1892, when business the world over was bad. The lowest percentage was 
1.4, Jan. 31, 1890. Highest yearly averages by months were 7.5 in 1893 ^^d 
6.9 in 1894; the lowest were 2.1 in 1889-90, 2.4 in 1899 (3-8 in 1901). By 
the Massachusetts census of 1885, 5^4 per cent of all gainfully occupied 
were unemployed at their usual occupation for six months — 30 per cent for 
one month or more. Most of the 5% per cent must have found other work; 
for so many to be idle half the year would seem to be very unusual. In a 
period of greater depression, 1894-5, the Rhode Island census showed 4.5 
per cent of all to be unemployed in June, and 7.3 per cent in February, the 
average being 5.8 per cent. Of all trade unionists in New York state, 30.6 
per cent were unemployed March 31, 1897, but only 13.6 per cent at the 
same date in 1902. The national labor department's estimate for the whole 
country of 1,000,000 as unemployed for a time in 1886 was only about 5 to 
7 per cent of all wage earners. The Massachusetts showing in 1885 of 29 
per cent of all gainfully occupied as not engaged in their usual occupation 
an average of 4.11 months of the year, included such as employing farmers 
or builders idle In winter. An accurate census in France showed only 2.9 per 
cent of wage and salary receivers to be idle March 26, 1896. The reason 
with 39 per cent of them was sickness, and with 31 per cent dullness of 
season. French industry is less subject to world markets than British, and 
Is free from America's waves of immigration and railroad building. 

2 The Strength of the Eight-Hour Movement came largely from Karl 
Marx's doctrine that profits, instead of being a just and necessary payment 
to the employer for his labor of management and his risk of loss, are a 
surplus value extorted from laborers by requiring of them more hours per 

(446) 



Irregularity of Employment. 447 

leader has said that the hours of work are too many so long as 
one person remains unemployed. However much we ought to 
sympathize with the unfortunate, this argument seems hardly 
worthy of consideration in America.^ It not only involves, with 
demand for product necessarily unchanged at first, the doing of 
less work by those previously employed, and a consequent fall 
of their wages or faihire to rise, but it also leaves out of account 
the fact that when the new system had been started, and every 

day than are paid for in wages, and more hours than would be necessary to 
produce the same output with all classes at work under state socialism. An 
eight-hour day by law has been a favorite demand at conventions and May 
day celebrations of socialists in Continental Europe, their anniversary of 
May I being the example followed by many American states in making of 
the first Monday in September a legal holiday called Labor Day. Estimates 
of the unemployed, and of their miseries, are exaggerated by socialistic 
writers, to support their claim that under use of machinery the cheapness 
of large scale production is putting industry in control of monopolists, and 
that to prevent the utter ruin of the workers the ownership of capital and 
industry must pass to the state. 

^A Short Work Day in a Crowded Country. There Is more reason 
for a short day in England, where there are no spare resources of land, 
forest, or mine, and where at no time, with industry as it is, are all the 
willing workers well employed — or employed at work worth doing. It is 
conceivable that a crowded country's natural resources might be so closely 
utilized that employing all the people six hours on work yielding good 
product value would give a better average of well-being than allowing the 
work on good resources to be absorbed by fewer men with long days, while 
the others worked poor land and poor mines, or followed poor business of 
other kinds. As wages for all labor of the same grade would tend to be 
fixed by the product of the men on the poor land and in the poor business, 
work by these a short day on the good resources might yield as much as 
they produced before in a long day on the poor. Abandoning the poor 
land, and the poor business, from readiness of all to leave the country rather 
than work over six hours, and rather than take for this short day less than 
they received for the long day before, — would lower the rent of the good 
land (page 6), and would stop the poor businesses unable to bear the higher 
pay per hour (page 417), thus throwing on landlords and capitalists, with- 
out rise of prices to consumers, the loss from diminution of total product. 
Relieving thus by emigration the pressure on a country's resources would 
be undoing what takes place when population increases. But by the most 
intelligent manufacturing and exchanging abroad, and by leading each to 
learn and find the work he can do best, — poor land, high rent, and poor 
business can be avoided, up to a reasonable crowding of population, while 
more hours of work above six give more in product and in wages. 



448 Getting a Living. 

man put to work, business depression and slackening of demand 
for labor would come again just the same as they have come 
repeatedly heretofore, after periods In which there was work 
for everybody without shortening the day.^ The real question 
here, therefore, and an important one, is, What can be done to 
make employment more regular? 

That High Wages and Continuous Employment Do Not Go 
Together seems to be a fact. In this matter there is an element 
of truth in the wage fund doctrine (page 130). To sell all the 
labor offered, as to sell all the strawberries brought to town, the 
price in each case must be lowered until by thus enlarging de- 
mand it is made equal to the supply. Though labor is like a 
perishable commodity, every hour of it being lost that Is not 
sold beforehand, its vital connection with the life and welfare of 
a man and his family, and its incapability of being withdrawn 
entirely from market like a commodity one can cease producing, 
make the lowering of wages to absorb the surplus labor a much 
more serious matter than the lowering of prices of commodities. 
With wheat or cotton, when the surplus supply has been con- 
sumed, scarcity raises price quickly and certainly; but with 
labor, in the absence of pestilence and immigration, the total 
supply remains about the same, change occurring in demand 
only. If, when labor demand improves, the pressure brought 
to bear by the workers for a raise of wages can be equalled by a 
contrary pressure from employers, wages may sometimes be 
kept below the level justified by prices and profits. The grad- 
ual effect of such wages to make labor dull and inefficient 

^Lack of Employment in Australia Was Worse by far after adoption 
of the eight-hour day than ever before. Being the rule for only t^venty 
trades in 1884, eight hours had become the rule for sixty trades by 1891, 
but from 1890 to 1894 Isck of employment was unprecedented, 15,000 men 
receiving public support for a time in Melbourne. Mr. Rae, who cites this 
fact, shows also from exact statistics that the British law of 1847, 
diminishing factory hours from eleven and twelve to ten, gave employment 
to no additional people. When it took effect factories were closing from 
deep depression arising from other causes, and as work was gradually 
resumed the output of operatives soon became as large as before. In his 
excellent book Mr. Rae advocates an eight-hour day where practicable for 
the sound reason that it will raise intelligence and efficiency, and increase 
happiness, while decreasing output but little if any. 



Irregularity of Employment. 449 

absorbs eventually what the employers at first gained by keeping 
wages down, and even raises the labor cost per unit of product; 
but this result is too distant to admit of dependence upon the 
average employer's self-interest as a safeguard of wages. 

Not to Submit to a Wage Reduction that can possibly be 
avoided is therefore a cardinal principle with union men. In 
this they are supported by solid reasons. First, their accept- 
ance of less pay would lower prices further than they would 
otherwise fall. To resist their dem^and afterward for an in- 
crease of pay, the employer would then be strengthened by the 
difficulty of raising prices with such commodities as clothing, 
purchases of which consumers can long delay and greatly cur- 
tail. Second, if wages could easily be lowered whenever profits 
began to decline, employers would learn to depend on wage 
reductions, instead of on use of better machinery and on ener- 
getic management. This would be a two-edged sword against 
progress, lowering the spirit of enterprise among employers, 
and lowering the standard of life and of efficiency among work- 
ers, whose pay would tend to fall rapidly, as in times past, to 
the level of bare subsistence. Third, in resistance by men to 
wage reduction, since reduction ordinarily causes hardship by 
depriving families of comforts long enjoyed, they receive more 
sympathy and moral support from public opinion than when 
they demand a raise in a standard of comfort to which, by some 
lapse of time, they have become accustomed. The force of the 
fact that they had once before possessed the higher pay might 
be explained away in differences of living expense. Fourth, 
workmen have larger savings and are stouter in spirit — being 
better prepared to bargain or to strike — after a period of high 
wages not yet lowered than after a period of low wages and 
slack employment. 

Partial Idleness in Defense of the Standard of Living is 
therefore preferred by unionists to a lowering of their rate of 
pay, when in dull times falling price and high wages stop or 
check the employer's production. Until improving business en- 
ables him to proceed again as before, the workers live economi- 
cally on previous savings and on temporary or short time em- 
ployment, or betake themselves to other occupations or to other 
towns. This was especially the case in 1893-98, when in many 
29 



450 Getting a Living. 

skilled trades wages were not lowered at all, though generally 
output was small and work scarce. A practice of saving money 
and living temperately, to be prepared for partial idleness — 
of bearing continually some self-denial for the sake of inestim- 
able gain in guarding and raising the standard of life, and in 
dealing with the employer not dependently, but with a reserve 
of resources — is the most strengthening and elevating kind of 
discipline that wage workers can have. This practice with 
them has also the most wholesome effect upon the other sections 
of society, winning the respect that is secured only by possession 
of resources to be reckoned with, and leading employers and the 
public to acknowledge the rights of wage earners, with the 
importance to all of their liberal maintenance. Possession of 
savings enables them also to continue most of their usual con- 
sumption when out of work, and hence to check the lessening 
of employment in the trades whose goods they buy.^ The 
union's out-of-work fund — necessary, under the low wages of 

^The Success of the Workers in Forcing up Wages when business is 
brisk, and of keeping the decline In depression as small as possible, is 
shown in the average daily pay of 25 occupations from 1870 to 1898. From 
$2.45 in 1872 this rate in America fell to $2.18 in 1876, then rose to $2.56 in 
1892, and fell to $2.43 in 1898. In the short depression of 1884-85, no fall 
occurred. The changes in England were similar. During 1900-1903, prices 
having previously risen and work increased, wages in nearly all occupations, 
both in America and England, have risen higher than ever before, and 
labor was never more closely employed. The fact that in the lower wages 
of France there was no fall in periods of depression, and that the rise was 
slow and steady, indicates that wages there do not follow profits closely 
as in America and England, but depend more on the old feudal or patri- 
archal basis of what is proper for support in one's station. The wage 
figures above are those of the U. S. Department of Labor. 

More Figures Proving Rise of Wages, omitted on page 360, are 
the following, derived by the labor department from its own careful in- 
vestigations and from the Aldrich Report. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 38.) 

In 21 American industries the average relative hours of labor, taking the 
hours of i860 as 100, were 105.5 in 1844, 95.5 in 1870, 93.6 in 1875 (perhaps 
by reason of running short time), 93.6 in 1880, 90.9 in 1887 up -to 1891. 

Relative money wages in gold were 86.5 in 1844, 98 in 1855, 100 in 
i860, 72.2 in 1863 (greenbacks fell far below par), 152.2 in 1872, 135.2 in 
1875, 152.7 in 1882, 150.7 in 1884, 161. 2 in 1892, 157.3 i" 1895, 163.2 in 1899 
(considerably higher in 1903). 

Relative wholesale prices of 90 articles were 11 6.2 in 1840, 100.3 ^^ 
t84.<?, 115.4 in 1856, 100 in i860, H2.2 in 1863, 152.9 in 1866, 134.8 in 1872, 



Irregularity of Employment. -451 

England, for holding back labor in wage bargaining — is a cause 
of weakness so far as men depend on it, and relax effort to save 
individually. 

But Some Reduction of Money Wages in Dull Times, not 

only in the aggregate per year by means of partial employment, 
but in the pay per hour and per piece, will continue to be neces- 
sary with perhaps a majority of the people. Industries supply- 
ing local markets, such as building trades and bakeries, or con- 
sisting of a few large concerns depending on demand in the 
home country, such as American locomotive and steel works, 
may be so unionized by workmen, and so checked in output by 
employers, as to keep wages per hour or per piece practically 
unchanged during a dull period that is not too prolonged. The 
price reduction permitted by cheapening of materials may here 
be sufficient, and in some lines a deep cut in price might not 
largely increase sales. But with industries whose prices are 
regulated mainly by exports to world markets, such as British 
cotton mills, or which consist of many scattered concerns sup- 
plying a home market, like American firms manufacturing fur- 
niture and buggies, — such concerted action among all the com- 
peting employers, and among the workmen, as to effectively 
limit output to the point within which wage rates can be main- 
tained, may be wholly impracticable. 

Where Fall of Prices Must Bring Fall of Wages. When 
some of the employers make additional sales and keep busy by 
lowering prices, others must usually do the same or suspend 
entirely ; and when the price reduction is no longer balanced by 
the cheapening of materials, and by a proper lowering of profits, 
wages must fall if work is to continue. In these cases, under 

103.4 in 1879, IT9 in 1882, 96.6 in 1892, 78.6 in 1897, 83.6 in 1899. Anoth- 
er computation, with 101.7 for 1899, gives 110.5 for 1900, 108.5 for 1901. 

Relative real wages in goods, measured by wholesale prices, were 75.5 
in 1840, 92.1 in 1849, 100 in i860, 67.9 in 1863, 56.2 in 1865 (this shows 
how war prices lower real wages), 83.2 in 1867, 112.9 in 1872, 132.3 in 
1878 (this shows how low prices raise real income for those at work), 122.6 
in 1880, 155.5 in 1885, 165 in 1890 (money wages rising and prices fall- 
ing), 174.5 in 1892, 193 in 1895 (money wages falling, but prices falling 
faster), 202.3 in 1897 (nearly three times the real wage of 1865), 195.2 in 1899 
(prices rising faster than money wages. The 1903 rate is lower. Prices rose 
40 per cent, 1897-1902 — stationary since. Reduced wages rose 40 to 100 per 
cent (coal miners, longshoremen) ; wages not reduced rose 10 to 30 per cent. 



45^ Getting a Living. 

a fall of wages, employment may not be greatly lessened, and 
the yearly income of the workers may be much larger than that 
of others retaining their high wages but getting less to do. 
Moreover, in such periods the fall in prices to consumers actu- 
ally raises real wages in purchasing power with fully employed 
persons retaining their money wages unchanged. Hence it may 
be considered positively unjust (if not to the employer in taking 
too much of his profits, at least to idle men he might employ 
for a larger output, and to consumers deprived of goods by 
prices not sufficiently lowered) — that in a time of depression 
there should not be a fall of money wages that had been raised 
high previously in good times, and had not been adjusted, like 
the fixed salaries of professional men, to a permanent average 
between a high and a low level. ^ Also, in the partly monop- 

ils It Right to be Glad for Gain that Comes from 'Another's Mis- 
fortune? The ex-governor of Michigan who, it was reported, spoke re- 
proachfully in 1893 of ^ college professor's expressed pleasure at being able 
to buy cheaply, overlooked the fact that the professor was only then having 
his promised inning, which implied an "outing" for somebody else — in this 
case the farmer or the manufacturer whose products he bought. Without 
the low prices of dull times, salaries in such professions would need to be 
larger to secure the grade of men desired. The professor was not different 
from the many American farmers who regarded with "ghoulish glee" the 
Russo-Turkish war of 1877, because it raised the price of wheat to $2 a 
bushel, nor from well paid mechanics who rejoice that others cannot acquire 
their skill. The right spirit here is that of the undertaker who is sorry 
his friend dies, but who — since death is inevitable, whatever he himself 
thinks or does — is glad for the chance to sell the funeral outfit. The wrong 
would appear if farmers sent emissaries to stir up war in Europe, or if the 
undertaker, to bring on disease, opposed new sewers, as liquor sellers oppose 
temperance reform. Yet their action then would not differ in principle from 
that of protectionists, who have foreign goods shut out to make their own 
scarce and high, or from that of unionists, who artificially raise the price 
of their labor by restricting apprenticeship. As unionists believe that "by 
protecting us against the competition of the unfit, the incompetent, we can 
be sure of a rev^^ard for our sacrifices" (the strong desiring to manacle poor 
fellows unfitted at best to survive in the trade) — so protected industries, 
with rich mines and great machinery, become frantic over the thought of 
competition from European pauper labor, producing with poor tools and 
poor mines, barely enough, above rent, to keep life in their bodies. Rea- 
sonable limitation of size of family Is different, benefiting all, since It pre- 
vents overcrowding the community's resources as well as the family's, and 
withholds from the unborn a gift of life not to be desired. 



Irregularity of Employment. 453 

olized industries mentioned in the preceding paragraph, some 
reduction of wages may be necessary in a long depression, to 
keep non-union employers from getting the bulk of the work 
(page 289), and to keep men from leaving the union under the 
pressure of need. 

The Modern Uncertainty of Employment had no coun- 
terpart in former times, when the mass of the people had only 
the necessaries of life, and could but slightly increase or de- 
crease their consumption. They were employed chiefly in nec- 
essary drudgery, which continued about the same in amount. 
This even condition of industry continued in the backward dis- 
tricts of America until recent years, so long as each neighbor- 
hood supplied itself, with little dependence on outside buying 
and selling. Prices and profits did not materially affect produc- 
tion, and calculating what to do was simple. Each man pro- 
duced what his own family needed, and what little additional 
he could exchange in the community. But now, on the con- 
trary, in the country as a whole, most that is produced, being 
greater in quantity than the producer could use, and not com- 
prising the variety he needs, must be sold for money, at prices 
fixed in markets supplied by shipments from over wide areas. 
What the supply and the price will be are difficult to foresee. A 
large proportion of the people's total income is spent for higher 
comforts, which many must stop buying when, from fall of 
price and of profit, their employment fails. Those who produce 
these comforts are then left idle also, and depression may spread 
to many occupations. Having to bear this uncertainty of em- 
ployment, and of manufacture and trade, is the price that society 
must pay for the abundant production and varied civilization it 
derives from use of machinery, from minute division of labor, 
from concentration of factories in the best locations, and from 
the general intensity with which business is now carried on. 

The Present System, While Yielding Infinitely Greater 
Results for good, is in some respects more dangerous to manage 
than was the old system, as driving a locomotive differs from 
driving a farm horse. But in net well-being the life of to-day 
seems to surpass the life of the past about as much as traveling 
in an express train is to be preferred over traveling in a prairie 
schooner. Down to the nineteenth century, from scantiness of 



454 Getting a Living. 

production and lack of transportation, crop failure in the most 
prosperous parts of Europe occasionally meant famine. Now, 
however, access by each community to a large region, in which 
to sell and to buy, enables it, when its own crops fail, to share 
(and by paying rising prices to increase) the good fortune of 
other communities in which products are most plentiful. In 
another year it may have the good crops while other communi- 
ties have poor. By this system of exchange, so far as it is per- 
mitted by selfish and short-sighted tariff laws,^ each community 
shares the good things of the whole world, and in turn helps 
to bear the whole world's burdens. In this kind of self-seeking 
lies the industrial brotherliness that nature blesses to the enrich- 
ment and elevation of all, with the same effectiveness that she 
curses socialistic brotherliness (page 385), for its destruction 
of both wealth and character. But with any conceivable 
progress, uncertainty of industry, though it can be reduced, 
can never be eliminated. Mankind lives on earth, not in heaven. 

To a Large Extent Business is Still Limited by the 
Weather, wholly beyond the influence of man. With some of 
the Western railroads 35 per cent of traffic depends upon farm 
crops, and hence weather changes quickly affect prices of rail- 
way shares, as well as prices of grain. By prospect of good 
crops the makers of farm implements are induced to buy largely 
of iron and steel, the railways to order new equipment with 
which to carry grain, and local merchants to lay in large stocks 
of goods, to supply farmers with good incomes from crops, and 
workers with good incomes from wages. In ordinary times 
business is thus made brisk in nearly all lines, from iron and 
coal mining up to production of finished goods for personal 
consumption. The opposite is true when crop prospects are 
poor. Fewer goods are then bought, and employment may be 
scarce. The weather has a similar effect on demand for winter 
or summer dry goods, and on the employment of their pro- 
ducers. 

There is Need for a Safe Method of Change in Wage Rates 
- — of change not to be resorted to in this temporary dull- 

^The surprising success with which favored interests can secure enactment 
of such laws is explained at length in the author's book, "Plain Facts as to 
the Trusts and the Tariff," 1903. 



Irregularity of Employmenr. 455 

ness of seasons, but necessary in many industries for their 
longer periods of depression. The higher wages are, and the 
more closely, under an average of prices, they trim the em- 
ployer's share down to minimum or necessary profits, the more 
quickly he must close his factory^ when this average price falls. 
Hence, the more complete the success of the union in raising 
wages, the more uncertain becomes employment. To overcome 
this uncertainty what is lacking? Obviously it is a safe and 
ready method of collective bargaining, between the union and 
each employer, or better yet, an association of all the employers 
in a district. In this important matter perfection has been most 
nearly reached in British cotton manufacturing, in which ex- 
pert officials hired permanently by the union, negotiating with 
experts representing the employers, each side understanding 
thoroughly every condition affecting the other side, — make for 
ratification the best adjustment of wages that seems possible. 
When this highly developed stage of industry has been reached, 
the capable employer asks no reduction of wages that by his 
own effort he can avoid, or that by limiting output for a while 
can be averted, knowing that, aside from the risk of a strike, 
the disturbing and discouraging effect of a reduction tends to 
lower his employees' work, both in quantity and quality. For 
the latter reason, and to avert discord, he agrees without much 
pressure to raise wages when better conditions have returned. 

^Running a Large Plant in Dull Times at a Loss is sometimes resorted 
to, in order to avoid greater loss in interest on capital and in other fixed 
charges. But as continuing to throw goods on a weak market deepens and 
prolongs a trade's depression, and eventually brings net harm to everybody, 
such a practice will probably be very rare under the present tendency to 
take care of the market by means of reasonable agreement against cut-throat 
price lowering. The running at a heavy loss ($100,000 a year) of Mr. A. S. 
Hewitt's iron works, mainly to help his employees, in the depression of 
1873-78, would now be deemed a bad kind of charity. A London practice 
(mentioned by Mr. Hobson) of occasionally destroying tons of fish and veg- 
etables, to avoid depressing prices, seems not to be resorted to in America, 
though of course a commodity is used for other purposes than food when a 
better price can thus be obtained. Outright destruction of food, with a 
third of Londoners going hungry, seems nearly enough to drive one to social- 
ism. Ordinarily a local glut is prevented or relieved by spreading the 
surplus over a larger area, and at the worst, with staple foods, price and 
demand quickly become normal when the normal level is reached in supply. 



45^ Getting a Living. 

The union, on the other hand, instructed by its professional 

experts, insists upon no more from the employer than is justified 
by conditions of trade, or by such defense of the workers' stand- 
ard of Hfe as it seems to be their right and duty to make, what- 
ever the trade exigencies. Yet under the fairest spirit between 
employer and employee, wage reductions by this uncertain 
method of negotiation, or by the employer's order, are always 
to be dreaded, and not willingly to be consented to unless the 
period of low prices and depression proves too long to be tided 
over by restricting output. Hence, where selling price fluc- 
tuates widely and frequently, the sliding scale system of Amer- 
ican iron and steel workers, and of British coal and iron indus- 
tries, by which, at quarterly or other intervals, wages are ad- 
justed by previous agreement according to average price of 
product — seems highly desirable ; to the employer when piece 
work earnings are not being unduly increased by adoption of 
new machinery, and to the employee when his standard of life 
is protected by a safe minimum below which the sliding scale 
shall not apply. Such an arrangement removes all friction from 
frequent adjustment of wages to price, but of course cannot 
obviate the necessity of revising the sliding scale itself after 
the changes an industry undergoes in several years.^ 

Growth of Speculative Judgment as a Remedy for Busi- 
ness Uncertainty. But while the weather and other factors, 
such as war and pestilence, must remain as elements of uncer- 
tainty, there has been room for improvement in men's judg- 
ment of business prospects. Hard times are usually due mainly 
to the calamitous effects of reckless borrowing, over-investment 
and over-production ; of a sudden drop from one extreme to the 
other — from a flood tide of production to the lowest ebb of busi- 
ness stagnation. Each of the severe cases of hard times in the 
United States was caused mainly by disorders in the country's 
system of money; but without cause of this kind there have 
been a number of periods of great depression in England and 

^The sliding scale, which is a form of profit sharing, Is described at length 
and recommended by Smart, in "Economic Studies," 1895, and is also recom- 
mended by Drage, in "The Labor Problem," 1896. It was adopted by 
President Roosevelt's commission in their award that settled the great strike 
of coal miners in 1902. 



Irregularity of Employment. 457- 

Germany. In some of these cases, as in 1873 and 1893, the 
depression was worldwide, extending from one country to 
others whose goods it had ceased buying. A more general de- 
velopment among business men of ability to properly speculate 
— to forecast the future, and to hold zeal within safe bounds — 
is the obvious and the only preventive for losses by over-invest- 
ment and over-production. In the present flush times (1898- 
1903) the bitter lessons of 1893-97 seem to be well remembered, 
and producers (not counting the manipulators of trusts) are 
moving cautiously, ready to check production when inflow of 
orders begins to slacken. Demand is gauged somewhat accur- 
ately by the system of selling through traveling salesmen before 
manufacture. It is probable that at prices far above a safe val- 
uation, thousands of millions of dollars have been invested in 
the United States since 1898 in new trusts and smaller corpora- 
tions, and that much of the new factory capacity cannot long be 
kept in steady operation ; but as railway building has been mod- 
erate, debt generally well secured, and loanable capital plentiful, 
it seems unlikely that this country, or the commercial nations in 
general, will soon suffer again such deep depression as that 
which covered most of the period from 1893 to 1897. One 
great cause of the dull times then — fear of monetary disorder 
from falling value of silver — will not be important hereafter, 
the single standard of gold having since 1897 been firmly estab- 
lished in the United States, and adopted by Japan, Siam, and 
several of the South American countries, with a prospect that 
before long no country of consequence will retain for its stand- 
ard a metal so largely produced as silver and so changeable in 
value. Neither will probability of a scarcity of gold, in propor- 
tion to demand for it, cause hereafter, as in 1893, fear of hard- 
ship to debtors from falling prices, inasmuch as the world's 
stock of gold since then has been rapidly increasing, and as the 
need of coin is being further lessened by spread of the use. of 
checks and bank notes. The various lessons of experience, the 
improved means for getting information and estimating future 
supply and demand, and the improved means for shipping 
surplus goods to markets needing them, are enabling the com- 
mercial world to lessen greatly the severity of depression. 
Periods of hard times are now less frequent than during the 



458 Getting a Living. 

first half of the nineteenth century, are recovered from more 
quickly, and cause far less suffering. 

Wage Workers Also Must Learn to Read Business Con- 
ditions and prospects, if they would avoid mistakes in their 
demands, and use their opportunities to best advantage. The 
higher they rise, in capability and in wages, toward a position 
of equality with the employer, the more they are exposed to 
change of pay or to slackening, of employment, and to the re- 
sponsibilities of bargaining and of providing for themselves. 
In thus being left to self-direction they are honored. It is the 
dull and helpless laborer whom the farmers of the neighbor- 
hood keep from suft'ering (but not to their own loss in the long 
run), whether his work is profitable or not, as the mass of the 
people, growing duller and more helpless by reason of their 
guaranteed support and of their obedience to compulsion, would 
be looked out for by the master officials under state socialism. 
P'reedom to choose must always be accompanied by risk of loss 
from mistakes. 

To Avoid Rushing One Year and Lying Idle the Next, 
unionists may well exert all their power toward equalizing em- 
ployment. This is a good reason why they object to overtime 
and to high pressure piece work, outside of such cases as emer- 
gency repairs, as loading vessels for departure, and as gather- 
ing crops in season. Irregularity of employment is the worst 
of all evils in some occupations. In British shipbuilding there 
have been cases in which the annual output was less than half 
what it had been two years before. Shortness and uncertainty 
of the period of employment are a cause of trouble to v/orkmen 
in building trades everywhere, though with them the trouble 
is partly provided for in specially high wages while work lasts. 
The reason for the objection of New York masons to work in 
two shifts, even with double pay at night, is that the season 
would be shortened, with little increase in the yearly aggregate 
of work, while the high pay and new positions would attract 
new men to crowd the trade in the city. Unionists are certainly 
correct in believing that it is better to lose interest on partially 
employed machinery, than to permit recurring idleness and suf- 
fering among men. This matter is analogous to that of early 
closing of stores. Twenty years ago, in the smaller American 



Irregularity of Employment. 459 

cities, retail stores were kept open every night until nine or ten 
o'clock. Agitation by salesmen changed the closing hour to 6 
o'clock except on Saturday, giving them some leisure, and forc- 
ing buyers to learn a lesson of considerateness. Building of 
great ships and engines is larger business, but the buyers of 
these might also be taught to have some regard for the welfare 
of men by whom they are served. 

Cannot Unionists Do Much to Relieve the Injurious Pres- 
sure on modern life? To check waste of strength and life in 
immoderate speed of production, and to lessen in advance the 
idleness this immoderation causes, unionists are justified in 
enforcing very high wages for overtime and for extra speed. 
In this w^ay overtime is made exceptional, as it is intended to be, 
not systematic, as that by which the short day rules in British 
industries have often been nullified. Such action by unions 
seems necessary for the good of society, and wholly just to all 
concerned. The employer cannot well regulate the inflow of 
customers' orders. From him and his competitors, raising their 
prices for the time, and reaping high profits, little effort could 
be expected toward giving up a harvest in hand for a later one 
in the bush. The workmen, on the contrary, are led by self- 
interest to prefer less work now and more in the future.^ In a 
time of brisk demand they cannot raise their wages so easily 
as the employer can raise his prices. Their reasonable policy 
is not to disturb the wage rate — sometimes settled previously by 
hard struggle — in every spurt of business activity. They en- 
deavor to raise their rate when the activity promises to con- 
tinue some time, but not so high as to necessitate much of a 
fall when dull times return. Their desire is to have no fall at 
all, leaving to the employer the task of meeting low prices by 
restricting output and by using better machinery. 

^The large shortening of the day bj- the garment workers' strikes begin- 
ning in 1894, had a noticeable effect in prolonging the working seasons and 
giving steadier employment. (U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 4, p. 372.) 

Slow Changes in Wages. It is because workers do not dare to risk 
their standard of living by consenting to have wages lowered quickly like 
prices, that they cannot have them quickly raised. During the Civil War, 
from i860 to 1865, prices rose 116 per cent, but wages rose only 44 per 
cent. (Levasseur. 22.) See in a previous note in this chapter the fall of 
real wages caused by war prices. Such woiild have been the loss to work- 



460 Getting a Living. 

The High Rates for Overtime, which the employer adds 
to his prices, not only reimburse the workmen for extra exer- 
tion, and for slackness of employment later, but tend to check 
over-investment by the employer's customers, as in the case 
of buildings and factory equipment, and tend also to prevent 
production by the employer and his competitors of more goods 
than the market will take. Unions may thus do much to avert 
a subsequent period of dullness or stagnation, as by promptly 
securing an increase of wages when prices and profits rise they 
may prevent waste of capital in new plants not needed by 
society. Unionism will be more effective toward these benefi- 
cent results as it spreads among the workmen of the world. 
Already the more important industries of America, Great 
Britain, and Belgium are largely under its control or influence, 
and those of Germany and France are fast being organized. 
Fraternal cooperation among unions will prevent one country, 
in busy seasons, from taking more than its share of orders by 
means of overtime not well paid for as in other lands. More- 
over, the exceptional skill developed under the best unionism, 
and the dulling effect of unionism's absence where it is needed, 
protect union workmen and their employers from the unfair 
competition of men in other lands or other states that work 
more hours at lower pay.^ Extension of factory laws limiting 

ers if there had come in 1893 o^ 1896 a drop to the silver standard, with a 
doubling of prices; and such, together with the paralyzing of business by loss 
on debts and uncertainty of future values, was the cause of their suffering 
repeatedly in colonial times, and between 1812 and i860, from issue of 
irredeemable paper money by states and wildcat banks. An inherited 
temptation, thus to raise prices and scale down debts, was strong in the 
greenback and free silver movements of 1874-96. 

British cotton workers regard as a crisis a wage reduction of only 3 
per cent. In twenty years to 1897 the spinners had five changes upward 
and seven downward. By the British boiler makers' and coal miners* 
agreements v/ith masters, wages change only 5 per cent either way, and do 
not change again until after six months. Masters are thus enabled to 
figure with certainty on wage cost. 

^One of the Best Effects of Socialistic Teaching has been the partial 
elimination of the old tribe or clan instinct of confining one's fellow feeling 
to the people of his own country, and of emphasizing his regard for them 
by hating all others. A thorough study of foreign trade shows (see the au- 
thor's book on the tariff) that what is best for all mankind is eventually 



Irregularity of Employment. 461 

the work day is necessary to save the sweated workers in cities 
(too poor and ignorant to form unions) from having to toil all 
night to make quick delivery of millinery and other seasonable 
goods. Customers do not know of the misery their haste 
causes ; but if they did know of it, and if many tried to be con- 
siderate toward the workers, competition for the custom of the 
less scrupulous buyers would tend, in the absence of factory 
laws, to make rushing work the rule. 

Reformed Distribution of Wealth as the Remedy for 
irregularity of employment has been ably urged by Mr. John A. 
Hobson.^ This serious evil — at its worst when he wrote, and 
apparently increasing with the spread of large scale production 
by machinery to more industries and to more countries, — has 
not been so nearly removed, by the prosperity in many lands 
since 1897, as to make his contention unworthy of study. It 
seems unquestionably true that by the payment of rent, profit, 
and interest to the few, in vastly larger amounts than they can 
possibly consume, their saving of capital for production has 
increased capital faster than the increase of demand for and 
ability to buy its products, besides the fact that consumption by 
the rich does not spread employment and prosperity as does the 
buying of common goods by the workers. When production 
passes ahead of consumption, capital and labor must go on short 
time. A too rapid construction (with mountains of debt) of 
railroads and factories, which are fixed capital, not to be turned 

best for every person everywhere. The natural laws of economics confirm 
the Christian doctrine that all men are brethren. A nation, like employer 
or employee, buyer or seller, needs the self-sufficiency requisite for taking 
care of itself, but, like each of these, it rarely needs to be otherwise than 
friendly. The class solidarity of workingmen, though marred by socialistic 
hatred of the classes above, is beneficent in preventing one nation from 
taking unfair industrial advantage of another. There is need for this class 
solidarity, under the present tendency to regard anything as allowable that 
extends the trade of one's country. (Page 335.) It is needed also when 
the disposition arises to make too much of the army and navy, "which are 
less necessary here than in Europe. America's surest defense consists of a 
trade that all nations gain from, and of a people so enterprising that as 
volunteers they can surpass the regulars of other lands. 

^In his book, "Evolution of Modern Capitalism," published in 1894. A 
related line of thought was taken the next year by Prof. William Smart, in 
his book, "Studies m Economics." 



462 Getting a Living, 

to other business without heavy loss, was admittedly one cause 
of the over-production of goods in 1867-73, and in 1887-93, 
leading to ruinous fall of prices, and to idleness and privation 
with vast multitudes. Profitable sale and satisfying use of all 
the consumable goods the country's capital could produce (in 
properly related quantities) w^ould be insured by so dividing 
the annual product as to give means of purchase to those desir- 
ing to buy. The socialists, whatever may be thought of their 
proposals, are right in their claim that there are grievous 
wrongs somewhere in the present system when workers in many 
occupations, suffering for one another's products, must lie idle 
simply because, from lack of the purchasing power they would 
have if at work, prices have fallen too low to afford any profit. 
Some Socialistic Reforms that Conservative Economists 
Approve, and which are now coming to be rapidly adopted, may 
be depended upon to make a decided change for the better in the 
matter of over-production and irregularity of employment. 
Repeating from previous chapters, these reforms include the 
following: (i) Municipal ownership of street railways, tele- 
phones, docks, and of water, gas, and electric lighting works, 
with national ownership of telegraphs and express business 
(parcels post). (2) National control of railway rates and serv- 
ice, or outright ownership if control cannot be made effectual. 

(3) Prohibition of clubbing of competitors by what few trusts 
may remain as monopolies after the tariff, the railroad, the cor- 
poration, and the patent laws have been thoroughly reformed. 

(4) Assessment at full value of all land, especially that held 
vacant by speculators, and taxation of incomes and inheritances 
— not so heavily as to discourage enterprise and saving, but 
heavily enough to prevent much of the nation's annual product 
from passing to those who have not rendered for it an adequate 
service to society. By saving to the people a large share of the 
excessive incomes now falling to stockholders in monopolies, 
and to other capitalists and land owners, these classes will have 
less to invest each year in railroads and factories not needed. 
That portion of the national product withheld from these classes 
the people will consume in additional railway and street car 
service at low rates, in additional commodities made cheaper by 
low freights and by reduction of tariff and of other taxation, 



Irregularity of Employment. 463 

and in vastly better public schools, libraries, parks, hospitals, etc. 
Instead of a piling up of tools and of goods, which above the 
point of effective use involves a waste, the result will be a build- 
ing up of the bodies, minds, and characters of men, women, and 
children, of which building there is now a woeful lack. There 
is a wide field for safe public gain in withholding monopolistic 
or unearned incomes; and there are immeasurable possibilities 
of the highest public benefit in a wise spending of taxes in the 
ways just indicated. To achieve inspiring results in this line, 
it is only necessary for a majority of the people to get a clearer 
understanding of economics, to vote honestly and intelligently, 
and to hold public officials and workers to a full earning of their 
pay by faithful performance of duty. 

But Risk of Depression from Miscalculation of Demand 
Must Remain — from over-building, over-producing, and over- 
borrowing. Under such inflated activity, which extends to 
most or all occupations, inability of a few at first to sell their 
goods, and to meet debts falling due, brings the same inability 
to others relying on them, leads men to refuse credit and to cur- 
tail orders for goods, and eventually, by lowering prices and 
closing factories, brings widespread depression, not to be re- 
covered from sometimes for four or five years. At first it is 
over-production of some commodities beyond the quantities 
wanted, but then, in other industries checked, there is under- 
production, and hence under-consumption for lack of purchas- 
ing power. Though each idle man would double his stinted 
consumption if he could get work, and would thus make a 
market for the goods other idle men might produce, employers 
in one trade do not dare to start their factories in the hope that 
employers in other trades will do so too, and thus give purchas- 
ing power for one another's products. The only future demand 
to be depended on is shown in orders for consumables from 
merchants, who are the best judges of how much their custom- 
ers will buy, and is shown in orders for machinery from in- 
vestors in new factories, who are the best judges in their respec- 
tive lines of probable demand. The production carried on is for 
as Jong a future as promises a return exceeding the costs and 
risks. The best speculative judgment leads to as much storing 
at" low prices as prospects justify. Depression is deepened and 



464 Getting a Living. 

prolonged by general lack of confidence, which displaces the 
usual readiness to take business risks. The tendency is for each 
merchant and manufacturer to narrow his business down closely 
to what he knows he can sell quickly. To induce people to buy, 
prices all along the line, from the raw material to the finished 
article, are lowered until but a shred of profit remains. A 
return to the normal level of liberal buying and producing is 
gradually brought about by a number of forces, including 
failure and disappearance of weak firms, settlement of debt, 
growth of population (making need for more goods), depletion 
of merchants' stocks, and wearing out of household furniture, 
buildings, cars, machines, etc. The return of business confi- 
dence in 1897,^ over the commercial world, was quickened by 
rapid increase of the annual output of gold, which promised 
a gradual rise of prices and profits, instead of the previously 
expected fall, from use of gold increasing faster than its pro- 
duction. This matter of future change of prices by reason of 
change in the quantity and value of the metal used in standard 
money, is another uncertainty that wnll always have to be con- 
sidered. In the single standard of gold there is perhaps the 
nearest approach to absolute stability of value that will ever be 
reached in this world of change — a value subject to no more un- 
certainty, perhaps, than there ought to be to induce people to 
avoid debts of too long standing. 

Socialism Would Not Remove the Need of Foresight as to 
what and how much to produce, nor prevent loss from change 
of equipment and method in production, without bringing far 
greater loss by hindering progress. To get the varied and 
abundant supply of goods and services now enjoyed, society 
must have production on a large scale by machinery, in many 
separate occupations, extending by exchange over the habitable 
globe, and commencing on the raw material months or years 
before the finished goods are consumed. There seems to be 
no better system possible than that of the present for securing 
exercise of judgment and caution. For his own mistakes each 
business man must bear the chief loss himself. There might 
be some salaried officials under socialism who w^ould try as hard 

^This subject is fully discussed in the next to the last chapter of the au- 
thor's book on the trusts and the tariff. 



Irregularity of Employment. 465 

to serve and please the public as to get wealth, power, or ease 
for themselves — there are a few such men now ; but the local 
people, with personal interests to urge, would have reached 
preternatural wisdom and self-control if they permitted the 
officials to do what was really best for the whole common- 
wealth. Because of the immensity of the commercial field, an 
individual's building of a new factory cannot now seriously 
injure his competitors by lowering prices, nor drive any of 
them out of business unless his factory is best fitted to survive, 
and hence is required for society's good.^ Freer international 

^Starving Because of Too Much Food. Mr. H. Gaylord Wilshire can 
shake off his fear of the great unemployed problem, which he expects the 
trusts to bring about within five years by making wages so low and output 
so large that production will be stopped by a glut of goods the people have 
no money to buy, and that hence the idle workers will starve because there 
is too much food. Employers now, whether trusts or individuals, do not 
make goods until they are first pretty sure of profitable sale ; while in keep- 
ing wages unduly low, or prices unduly high, no trust can go far, no trust 
that is wise desires to attempt it to an extent of any consequence to a worker 
or consumer, and none of it at all will be possible if people raise their intelli- 
gence to the level required by our civilization. Falling prices and rising 
wages will carry off all the desired goods that can be produced (page 365), 
but to get them there can never be any other way than first to turn out labor 
or goods to exchange. If, as is often claimed, the American shoe factories 
could supply the year's demand in four months, the only remedy there ever 
can be is for some of the employers and workers to leave the business. They 
entered it and remained in it by choice, and they are free to leave it and 
choose any other trade, down to farming, in which they are sure of a living 
at least. That they do not leave it shows that the complaint is exaggerated, 
and that new men have not crowded into it unreasonably. 

Speculation, of whose evils the socialists complain, is not confined to ad- 
vanced competitive societies. The Filipinos and Spanish Americans know 
nothing of stock exchanges, but in lotteries and cock fighting they lead the 
world in gambling. Under our system of exchange, with goods brought 
from and shipped to all parts of the globe, speculators render the useful 
services of carrying the needed surplus (page 16), and of so forecasting a 
future scarcity that present price rises and thus, to meet the scarcity, checks 
consumption and increases production. This is better than having the 
scarcity come unprepared for as a famine, or than having unforeseen a ruin- 
ous glut. Public officials, not bearing themselves the losses nor obtaining 
the gains, could never render these services so well, nor so cheaply to society. 
After all has been done by law to protect from swindling, the many who 
now lose their savings by investing in worthless schemes, or on stock and 
30 



466 Getting a Living. 

trade (page 454) would diminish the injury here, by spreading 
a surplus of goods over the world, and thus lowering prices the 
least, while carrying the benefit to the most. Even in a small 
local market the public injury from leaving enterprise to in- 
dividuals is a trifle compared with the benefits. A new office 
building is rarely erected, to attract the doctors and lawyers 
from the old ones, unless the latter are inferior to what the 
town is entitled to, and are suited only to cheaper uses. In 
the easy starting of grocery stores, little capital is lost, the 
goods and shelving being readily salable in case of failure ; and 
among buyers of some intelligence few of these stores survive 
long whose convenient presence does not result in real benefit to 
customers. Loss of employment to men displaced by machin- 
ery is becoming a small matter nowadays. Operating machinery 
becomes more alike in different branches of industry (branches 
multiplying into wide fields), so that men pass with little loss 
from one to another ; and workmen now — unlike the hand 
weavers, who clung to their occupation though its dying con- 
tinued through half a century — have mainly given up the old 
guild ideas of an exclusive right to a trade, and of a property 

produce exchanges, must learn, if they want to be fitted for civilization, to 
carry and handle money amid the temptations of trade, as the country youth 
must learn when he goes among the fakirs on the circus grounds. The 
socialist's remedy is to return to the life of the tribal village, in which the 
people, as children, were not supposed to be capable of exchange, and little 
of it was allowed, or from scarcity was possible. That judgment seems 
over-charitable which (Ely, "Social Reform," 1894) classes under elements 
of strength socialism's claim that with harmonious production it will dis- 
place a system, planless, anarchic, chaotic, cruel. Besides the fatal and not 
denied objection, that with people sufficiently acquisitive to survive as civi; 
lized nothing approaching complete socialism could arise or continue, — 
socialism, even if successful, could not secure a better balancing of supply 
and demand. As American states gave way to a craze for canals (1815- 
50), incurring a half century's burden of debt, so, in estimating for a single 
family, a housewife will turn it against plums by canning too many; and 
any person, buying for himself alone, will strain resources to get some new 
fad, such as a bicycle, of which he is soon tired. A socialism giving cities 
and counties liberty to produce for market would not lessen present uncer- 
tainty. By taking away liberty of choice, risk of mistake would be lessened 
by having one central despotism, assigning work and issuing rations to 
each person In the whole nation. Risk would be lessened further by im- 
prisoning people, and furthest of all by killing them. 



Irregularity of Employment. 467 

right not to be impaired in one's skill (page 366), realizing that 
they have a right to their skill but not to another's need for it — - 
that people would gladly and justly do without the coal miner 
if they could, as well as the doctor and the undertaker. In the 
growing desire and need to consume, employment is sufficiently 
guaranteed by nature. The people's part is to educate and in- 
form the workers and all others how to take care of themselves, 
while preventing by law dishonest promoting and monopolizing. 

Yet All Are Coming to be Socialists to the extent of factory 
laws, of close control of railroads and other corporations, and 
of public supply of many municipal and government services. 
On account of the monopolistic nature of these services, they 
must be controlled or conducted by government, to avert a 
heavy and growing burden on the people in the form of un- 
earned incomes. Perhaps all the well known economists sup- 
port this movement to some extent. Among the scientific 
thinkers ]\Ir. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, and Mr. Hobson, seem to 
desire to go farthest, and to expect greatest results. There is 
but little risk here if a step is not taken until the people under- 
stand it and are ready for it, and if all its effects, including 
especially the indirect and remote, are justly weighed before 
taking the next step. In America, as already in Europe, public 
ownership may pass from electric plants and gas works to street 
cars, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, mines, and forests. Mr. 
Hobson thinks that the economies of large scale production by 
machinery, and the wastes of competition in price cutting 
meant to drive out rivals, will draw one industry after another 
into trust monopolies, until the welfare of society requires the 
government to take possession gradually of a number of them. 
Since wants increase indefinitely, and as consumption passes 
more and more to intellectual and artistic services, the field for 
individual effort would not be narrowed. It seems to most 
economists, however, that better laws for corporations, w^ith 
tariff reform, and with public oversight and control of railroad 
and mine monopolies, giving impartial rates to all, would dis- 
pose of the trust question. After the people have done, through 
their local, state and national governments, the many things 
here mentioned that clearly ought to be done, they will know 
whether to undertake more. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

WAGE EARNING BY WOMEN 

Does Working by the Wife and Children Make the Father's 
Wages Low, or must they work because his wages were already 
insufficient for the family's support before their work began, 
and would be low whether they worked or not? The trade 
tmion doctrine gives a decided affirmative answer to the first 
part of the above question, and appears sometimes to oppose 
work by women for wages, on the ground that men's pay should 
be high enough to support the women as formerly, apart from 
gainful occupations. Some even say that the father's pay is 
reduced by the full amount the others in the family earn. This 
doctrine rests on the same fallacy as the union argument for 
shortening the work day, and arises from a failure to perceive 
the limitations of the fact that wages depend upon scarcity of 
labor to be hired. That they depend upon such scarcity is true ; 
but except when marginal profits are already high, it is true 
only so far as rise in wages is based upon rise in value of labor's 
product, which is what the employer buys. As a forced rise in 
price of product is seldom possible, having the effect to lessen 
demand or to drive buyers to other producers, a worker can only 
secure the highest rate of pay afforded by his product's natural 
price, and then turn out as large a quantity as he can. The 
earnings of his wife are a clear addition, excepting household 
loss occasioned by her absence, and the spending of them for 
the family adds to employment in general. If she did not work 
another woman would, from the thousands earning as little or 
less. A union of all the people in the trade could raise their 
wages only so far as their efficiency in turning out product 
value separated them from others getting less who might take 
their places. Where the wages fixed by natural price of prod- 
uct are unsatisfactory, there is only the old remedy of turning 
out a larger or better product, or of selling one's labor as it is 

(468; 



Wage Earning by Women. 469 

where it will bring more — at another place, or in another occu- 
pation. 

But When the Wife 's Work Causes the Husband to Do Less 

— to be more shiftless, and to depend on her for support — then 
it lowers his pay by lessening his product value, or by weaken- 
ing his effort to get the best in positions and the most in wages. 
Unfortunately, this is often the case. Yet there is no soundness 
in the complaint that his wife's working crowds him out and 
forces him to keep house in her place. This is like the complaint 
as to idle men and busy children (p. 314). If a woman's prod- 
uct value is equal to his, or at her pay is worth more than his 
at his pay, he is either a poor worker or is in the wrong trade, 
and could not long get more than her rate of pay per unit of 
product, if not entirely displaced by the employer's preference 
for women's work because more suitable. The remedy is the 
same: he must work better, or find a job better suited to his 
capacity. The trouble is generally in his own will. The sys- 
tem of employing women, being already established in his trade, 
has no effect on his employment and wages, which in this trade 
remain unchanged whether or not, by refusing to work, his wife 
forces him to support the family. With a husband of this kind 
a wife must be careful never to bring in a penny to the family 
income so long as by expecting full support from him as a mat- 
ter not to be questioned he can be kept busy. A self-respecting 
man able to work will not relax effort and depend on his wife, 
but almost any man may be spoiled somewhat by a wife that is 
too ready to wait on him (page 94). Many shameful cases of 
robust loafers living on the wages of wife and little children 
have lately been found in the factory law movement in the 
South, and many a man in England marries to get the wife's 
earnings. Local opinion, especially that of the working class, 
should frown on such men unrelentingly, and everywhere should 
require good reasons from men not at work who have wage- 
earning wives or daughters ; while the present laws making 
non-support a criminal offense should be made more stringent, 
and the wife should be encouraged to make complaint of the 
husband who drinks up his own wages and throws on her the 
family support.^ The fact that the town in which a man lives is 

.^Louisiana's law of 1903 has been upheld, requiring, for non-support or 
desertion of a wife, imprisonment of the husband at hard labor. The 



470 Getting a Living. 

a woman's town is no excuse for his not working ; let him find 
a man's town. Unwillingness of men to be idle, and of girls to 
leave home, forces men's and women's industries to develop 
together, with an equal distribution of the sexes. The need of 
new industries for men is now mentioned in some Michigan 
cities whose factories need more women. Textile mills have 
multiplied in the hard coal district of Pennsylvania, because in 
the miners' families were many unemployed daughters. 

Where People Are Ignorant and Dependent, however, 
whether the husband be indolent or not, work at wages by the 
wife and children has always tended to lower the pay of the 
father. Instead of seeking from all the employers the highest 
wages their competition to hire help will induce them to pay, he 
meekly takes what is offered if it will support the grade of life 
to which the family has been accustomed. A smaller sum is 
made sufficient for him by the income from the work of wife 
and children. With such people as these, still numerous in Eu- 
rope, it is true that wages depend on the standard of living. 
(Pages 258, 429.) But a worker of manly independence, which 
quality unionism might well do much more to teach, gets all his 
labor will bring — does so more energetically after saving money 
than before ; and instead of relaxing effort when from poverty 
his wife must work, he strives then the harder, that her work- 
ing may be only temporary.^ 

number of children in Georgia cotton mills will be reduced by half, it is 
said by a law of 1903 for punishing those living wrongly on children's pay. 
But many deem the law a bad one, to stop the demand for a child labor law. 
^Mixing Cause and Effect. Even Mr. Hobson quotes in his book, with 
apparent assent, some figures from the characteristic argument of Prof. 
Gunton, who assumes that the wages of men in cotton mills are low because 
their wives too are wage workers, and that wages in building trades are 
high because the wives of men there devote themselves to home duties. 
Aside from some effect on the husband's industrial character, explained 
above, it seems hardly necessary to point out that marginal buyers do not 
want cotton goods at higher prices, and that hence the present number of 
cotton mills could not be run at higher wage cost per yard of product. But 
buildings, on the contrary, are worth enough to their owners to admit of 
high wages to carpenters, who get such wages because no men able to do 
their grade of work can be hired for less. The only effect the carpenter's 
high standard of comfort has upon the matter is to induce him to get, by 
union demand and by readiness to go elsewhere, all the pay the demand 
and supply will afford. Above that subsistence rate which the employer 



Wage Earning by Women. 471 

The Sound Reason for Unionism's Objection to Women as 
Workers is that in their weakness and inexperience, and in the 
fewness of occupations open to them, they have submissively 
accepted wages making the employer's labor cost per item of 
product lower with them than with men ; that is, they have 

may find it profitable to pay for the sake of efficiency, either a standard of 
living or a union demand is as nothing when the worker has no access to 
better positions, and when hundreds equally desirable stand ready to be 
hired. Supply and demand in the labor market do not then admit of a 
change with him for the better. If cheaper builders could have been hired, 
almost without limit, as cotton operatives can be hired, buildings would 
have increased, and wages and prices in building trades would have fallen, 
until the wage conditions of the cotton industry had been reached or 
approached. 

Work Belongs to the Cheapest Who Can Do It. There is nothing 
wrong in this. The cotton operatives employed last, women and all, are 
doing the most valuable work they can, both for themselves and for society, 
and have a right to the employment that lowers price and wages for all in 
the trade (p. 351) ; while the operatives employed first would have had no 
right to keep up prices and w^ages by securing a monopoly, through shutting 
new workers out of the trade, or the employers to do so by preventing the 
building of new mills. Only by means of a labor monopoly could men 
textile workers follow Mr. Hobson's suggestion to raise their wages by 
keeping out of the m.ills their women and children. The Connecticut machin- 
ist, who alone earns as much as his neighbor and family together in a cotton 
mill, would receive no less pay, if he did as much work and was as eager 
in his demand, though his own family went to work in the mill ; while 
the neighbor, if he did no more nor better work, and perhaps regardless 
of his demand, would receive no more in the mill though his family ceased 
working and remained at home. It is the employer's right, and probably 
his duty, to have his work done by those people (already settled in the 
country) who, at usual and unforced wages, give him the largest net value 
for each dollar he pays them. The cheapest people who can do the work 
deserve to have it, both because they give most and are most in need of 
sympathy. No clerk at twelve dollars has a right to his job if a woman is 
preferable at six. But there is no need for concern. The woman would 
have been hired long ago if she were as desirable. The right to high 
wages (page 153), like the possession of them, arises from the utility and 
natural scarcit)^ of one's skill. This is the case with all values. Cheap 
cotton cloth is a benefit to society, but it would be the duty of the operatives 
to let society lack cloth if in other work they could get higher wages. The 
poorly paid, least of all, should give to society free anything it ought to 
pay for. Excepting sometimes such services as preaching and teaching (done 
partly for other consideration than money), the highest pay in reach is 
proof that one's work done for it is that which from him society needs most. 



47^ Getting a Living. 

been forced by necessity to commit against unionism the serious 
offense of getting work by taking less than the regular rate. 
Hence, union men have probably been no more ungallant than 
is excusable. Their opposition to opening an occupation to 
women has seldom been outspoken, or has involved toward 
them an attitude of outward unfriendliness.^ The complaint 
has been rather passive, and directed against modern conditions 
of industry, instead of against the women themselves. 

The Objection Soon Removed. Fortunately, in each of the 
many cases in which women have entered a new occupation, 
their competition with men has soon been removed by their 
drifting into and absorbing certain grades of the work to which 
they are best suited, and by the men's rise into grades higher 
and more remunerative. For instance, in retailing goods the 
ribbon and notion counters soon passed to the women, while the 
men remained as experienced and responsible heads of depart- 
ments, and in charge of all work requiring bodily strength, such 
as selling carpets. The lady book-keepers took the easy posi- 
tions, in small offices, and as assistants in larger ones, working 
without much responsibility under the direction of a man with 
experience, and with strength to bear the burden of care. Hence, 
over nine-tenths of the industrial field occupied by both men 
and women, the two sexes have different work, and do not com- 
pete with one another. The rule is men's work at men's pay, 
and women's work at women's pay. In the few cases where 
they do exactly the same work, their pay per piece is usually 
equal. In all the Birmingham trades many thousands of women 
are employed, but in no case do they do the same work as men. 
Where women working for less pay take away from men a 
branch of work, several new branches for men soon appear. 
(Webb.) The complexity of life arising from use of machin- 
ery has enormously increased the number of skilled workers re- 
quired (page 376). It is in the manufacturing centres, where 

^At Oshkosh, Wis., in 1898, one important object of a large strike of 
unionist wood-workers was to force the employers to cease hiring women 
and children. In 1877 Cincinnati cigar makers struck successfully against 
employment of women. In England women are shut out "in some cases by 
organized opposition of male workers" (Hobson, 1894). Previous to 1886 
the unions of English printers were hostile to women and refused to admit 
them. 



Wage Earning by Women. 473 

machinery is used to the utmost limit, that high wages are re- 
ceived by the largest proportion of the people, not in the coun- 
try market towns and distributing cities, whose business is but 
little changed from that of the handicraft era. Moreover, men 
have taken not a little work that was formerly done by women, 
especially in spinning and weaving, in dairying and fruit can- 
ning, in baking, washing, cooking, and waiting in dining rooms. 

The Employment of Children Wastes Labor Power in a 
country, by cutting short their education and stunting their 
growth, thus taking from the total labor product of their adult 
life a quantity many times greater than what they produce by 
child work. Here, as in the case of women, unionism's objec- 
tion is fallacious in its desire to make labor scarce, which effect 
also makes scarce the goods we enjoy, and the capital and buy- 
ing demand that provide employment. The objection, though 
unsound, is excusable where by hiring boy labor an employer 
can displace men or lower their pay. But such a driving of 
men into new employment worth more is required for society's 
welfare in those cases where the work of boys, like that of 
women, is proper and unavoidable — where the work, unlike 
that of the skilled trades, gives a lower cost of production with 
low efficiency and low pay than with high efficiency and high 
pay. If the employer can clearly gain by hiring boys above six- 
teen years of age (in full compliance with factory laws and 
imder the rise of boys' wages such a demand will bring), his 
work is boys' work, and boys ought to have it, not only for 
their own gain in good wages and that of the public in low 
prices, and for the gain of the trades whose goods the boys buy, 
but also that the men displaced may turn to work in which the 
pay is all earned, and is not partly charity nor dependent partly 
upon a withholding of dues from the boys and the public. 
There is not likely to be much trouble here for men who are 
good workers, and are not helplessly tied to one trade. The 
capable employer will hardly care to incur the trouble and loss 
of trying to operate w^th boy labor unless the boys are entitled 
to the employment. 

Unionism's Opposition to Child Labor is producing good 
results in labor laws, and in the important matter of compulsory 
education, though perhaps it is but slightly based on the sound 
motive of so guarding children as to benefit them and society 



474 Getting a Living. 

by making the total of their Hfe service as large as possible. 
Yet for this opposition there would be, and may be, good reason 
in desiring boys to grow up strong and resolute, so that they 
will demand through proper unionism the largest pay in reach^ 
as those boys do who are trained in public industrial schools 
(page 323), Perhaps not many boys would regard the union- 
ist as a friend for his part in keeping them out of factories by 
law, as they would regard him for his favor toward industrial 
education. But the desire of many unionists for strict regula- 
tion by law of women's w^ork, with outright prohibition of it in 
some lines, can hardly spring from regard for the women's own 
welfare half so much as from selfish desire for the employment 
they take, and for removal of their competition in the labor 
market. Extension of such interference by law soon becomes 
tyrannous. 

Is Wag"e Earning by Women an Evil? The first thought 
may be that it is, in view of their low wages, and of the tend- 
ency to leave them more and more to their own slender capacity 
for support. But the change brought about during the last 
thirty years, by the entrance of American women into nearly 
all the suitable occupations, is not so great as it appears. Did 
women before do nothing? Apart from towns having textile 
factories, their work then was not seen, being done within the 
household, except in school teaching, and in millinery shops; 
but it was harder than their work now, and at lower pay when 
done for wages. The development of manufacturing by ma- 
chinery, with the accompanying growth of cities, made neces- 
sary the change in vv^omen's occupations. While population 
was yet chiefly on farms, and farming machinery was little 
used, women never lacked work. They helped in the fields in 
former times everywhere, and do so still in backward districts, 
even in America ; while until recent times they spun and wove 
and made the household supplies of clothing, soap, candles, 
cheese, and other things. When this work was taken by fac- 
tories, to be done by machinery with vastly better results in 
speed, cheapness, and quality, other occupation in its place was 
necessary for woman's development. Nobody can be idle, not 
only because of the need for support, but because idleness is 
irksome, and injurious to mind and character. 



Wage Earning by Women. 475 

The Effect of Women's Work to Increase Society's Sup- 
plies. Moreover, people then had very few useful things, and 
with sparse population the struggle for such existence as they 
had was yet slow and easy. To produce the varied and abun- 
dant supplies now enjoyed, help from the women is necessary 
in many occupations. \'arious notions and articles of clothing 
could not be sold under higher prices in quantities large enough 
to admit of their production at all in factories with the high- 
priced labor of men. If women made them at home by hand, 
instead of in factories, they would earn less than factory pay, 
as do the home workers among the sweated, and society, espe- 
cially the working class, would have fewer of the goods. If 
the peeling of potatoes had to be done by men at good wages, 
potatoes might not be worth raising. Women do not peel them 
cheaply that they may be raised, but do so because such work 
and such pay are for them the best in reach, and because nature 
has so adjusted the demand and supply of the different grades 
of ability, and of the different products, that wonderful har- 
mony and happiness for all classes may be realized if people 
will only use their heads and hands as was intended. Without 
women's help, their work in stores and offices would be done 
by men taken from other employment. The latter's present 
work would have to be stopped to that extent, lessening the 
quantity of goods produced by men. The effect would be the 
same as if a farmer had to stop plowing two hours before noon 
to go to the house and cook his dinner. His labor would then 
cultivate less land, and produce less grain. He would have 
access to more work, as those unionists desire who oppose new 
machinery and oppose work by the unskilled (page 282), but 
he would have fewer goods for his pains, and so would all 
others with him, and less employment to others would his buy- 
ing afford. A\'omen behind the counter, and at the typewriter, 
release men for work that women could not do. With a 
smaller total product of any commodity to divide, every per- 
son's supply of it is diminished by its higher price, even miners 
and lumbermen, whose work is farthest removed from assist- 
ance by women. Only to the few people making the commod- 
ity does the higher price bring gain, and not to those among 
them on whom the necessary decrease of supply falls. 

The Relief of Women from Dependence. Without wage 



47^ Getting a Living. 

working by women the loss would be heaviest and most direct 
on the family having to do without the four to eight dollars a 
week now earned by a daughter — her work at home would sel- 
dom balance it ; while the loss would be crushing on the daugh- 
ter herself, whose supply of goods would be small in a poor 
family, and whose dependence on others would have a weaken- 
ing effect on her character. Personal helplessness, as an ele- 
ment of refinement, added formerly (does to some extent yet) 
to the attractiveness of young women in well-to-do families, 
and promoted men's gallantry; but the poorer young women 
never escaped the necessity of work, and lack of opportunity to 
earn wages led them to marry at an early age, giving up hope 
of education, and gave them but little choice in selecting a hus- 
band. The rapid increase of population resulting, which was 
a benefit to society while the country was being settled, would 
now crowd people out on to the poorer land, and into the lower 
wages of poorer business, and would prevent the family train- 
ing necessary to fit children for the complex industry of to-day. 
It is mainly the bringing by the poor of large families into the 
world, to grow up untaught into their parents' helplessness, 
that prevents poverty from decreasing faster. The present 
practice of young women, in spending a part of their adult life 
in useful work at wages, makes them purposeful, intelligent, 
and permanently independent, enables them to choose worthy 
husbands, and gives these invaluable qualities to their children ; 
while it provides an honorable support for those who never 
have a suitable opportunity of marriage. 

Why Women's Wages are Low is easier to explain, and 
involves less injustice, than is commonly supposed. Where 
they do not get equal pay for equal work — that is, where the 
wage cost per unit of product is lower with them than with 
men — a force much stronger than a sense of justice or sym- 
pathy, namely, the employer's motive of gain, tends to remove 
the inequality by giving the employment to the women alone. 
By falling price of the article made, their pay then becomes 
rightly adjusted to the value of their product; and to change 
that pay a woman must learn to work faster or better, or sell 
her work in another occupation in which its price is higher. 
No doubt there are many cases in which a lady teacher or book- 
keeper, or a saleslady, of ^.rc^/'fzowa/a&zVffy, renders for less pay 



Wage Earning by Women. 477 

as desirable service as a man's, being prevented from selling her 
work at full value by the inconvenience of proving to different 
employers what she can do, and by their assumption that she 
is not much better than the inferior average of her sex.^ But 

^High Pay for Women of Ability. Her disadvantage here, by reason 
of her sex and its customary low pay, is removed in United States gov- 
ernment clerkships, in which the grade of the position fixes the pay, making 
it the same for a woman as for a man if she is capable of holding the place:. 
In public employment this seems to be a justifiable departure (usually ques- 
tionable — page 412) from fixing wages at the rate of the market. Where 
a woman, as money order clerk in a post-office, does the work fully as well 
as a man, the excess in the fixed salary of nearly double what she could 
earn elsewhere the public can wisely allow as a contribution toward 
woman's economic elevation. Chances to secure such positions encourage 
women to become qualified for them, and may be so used, in wage bargain- 
ing with employers, as to obtain an approach to a man's rate of pay for 
similar work in private industry. As the woman's rate is thus raised 
toward the man's, the amount of the government's contribution falls. 
Though as a rule, in school teaching, and in the clerkships of cities and 
states, women get positions designed for them, both in duties and in 
salary, these positions have become so numerous, with others like them 
in private employment, and provide so well for the range of exceptional 
ability, up to its highest limit, that perhaps very few women, especially 
if active in seeking better positions, need now continue long to take less 
pay than their service is worth when accurately compared with that of 
men. In few cases will a woman's service prove fully equal ; hence 
lower pay for her will be the rule. 

The Influence of Custom in Keeping Women's Wages Low is that it 
leads them to submit contentedly to the situation, securing work by accepting 
little, without learning to turn out more product value, and without seeking 
to sell their work "where its price is highest ; and that it leads to a general 
feeling that such pay is proper for the support of a single one, with the 
result that the employer is not induced by conscience to assist women to be 
worth more (page 145), and that the public does not actively encourage them 
to greater efficiency and independence. A deplorable subjection of spirit 
among women, not including servants, exists generally in Great Britain. 
Their usual ten shillings a week ($2.43), — settled as subsistence under the 
hard life of fifty years ago, and insufficient to maintain strength, with the 
many having no help from the home family, — a large employer told Pro- 
fessor Smart could be reduced to half, he believed, if local employers united 
for the purpose. That was doubtless an exaggeration, since those not 
partly supported could not live, and since the home families of the others 
would hold back their w'ork rather than see it thus sacrificed. Among the 
dullest people in America, the country negroes of the South, it is unlikely 
that their wages on farms (already down to a coarse subsistence) could be 



47^ Getting a Living. 

cases are probably rare in which men continue to be employed 
where the average woman, at low^er pay, is fully as desirable, 
and can be employed in sufficient numbers.^ In the North 
Carolina dry goods store in which 4 women employed at $4 
each per week were said to be equally efficient to 4 men em- 
ployed at $11 each per week, the men were doubtless necessary 
to take care of the management or the heavy work, or were 
kept for their command of custom In other words, the equal 
efficiency was in one or a few lines of work, such as selling 
dress goods, and did not amount to equality in net desirableness. 
Not many employers would pay one person $11 for what could 
be bought at $4 from another person more deserving. 

The Rate of Pay is the Same in Piece Work among weavers 
in textile factories. In 56 American cases women earned 8 
per cent more than men; in 195 cases men earned 17 per cent 
more ; in 36 cases the average w^as the same for both sexes. In 
29 cases in 21 cotton mills, 753 women averaged more each 
than 585 men; in 99 cases in 43 mills, 3,015 men averaged more 
each than 5,560 women. In cotton weaving in Lancashire, as 
far back as 1824, men and women have done the same work, at 
the same piece rates, some of the most efficient women earning 
more than the average of the men. In 1886 the average was 
about the same for both sexes. The case is the same with 
weavers in France; and is the same in various piece rates of 
British textile factories in which both sexes are united in their 
demand by one strong union. It is a lack of this union demand, 
with readiness to strike, or a lack in unionism's absence of a 
readiness to seek better districts, that holds so many British 

appreciably lowered without driving them to other communities, or into 
idling and stealing. In most districts their access to railway and mine 
work has raised their pay from the old stagnant basis of bare subsistence 
(perhaps falling in money as food prices fall) up to a live basis of labor 
demand and supply. 

^Prof. Smart says the Prudential Insurance Company of England, in 
1 891, had 243 women who did routine book-keeping better than men, and 
at about half the men's pay. He says there are many such women in 
British government offices. They are content with low pay because of the 
gentility of the positions, and do not try, by offering their service to many 
employers, to get its full worth. Women are so unready to leave home 
that their pay on one side of narrow Scotland Is fifty per cent lower than 
on the other side. 



Wage Earning by Women. 479 

women to ten-shilling wages, and to the dull inefficiency that the 
vicious circle of such pay confirms.^ By a Massachusetts re- 
port of 1883 women's wages in 24 manufacturing industries 
averaged 51 per cent of men's; in England this average has 
lately been only 41 per cent. Actresses are sometimes paid 
more than actors, by reason of the scarcity of the former, and 
of their sexual attractions. Among novelists women are paid, 
it is said, as high as men. In a few American cases, at piece 
work, women have earned more than men in making cigars and 
paper boxes, and in stitching shoes ; but generally the men 
whom they excelled were of the second and third grades of 
efficiency. The classes of cases here mentioned are probably 

^The Importance of Unionism to Women. Professor Smart thinks that 
if the well paid women weavers in Lancashire became separated from the 
men's union the former would accept less pay, and that soon their wages 
would fall to the low level of other women workers, and the men would 
leave the trade — skilled women workers in England being paid very little 
better as a rule than unskilled. But as the w^omen workers have skill not 
possessed by others and not easily acquired, very little risk of losing their 
positions, it seems, would be involved in a collective demand by the women 
alone for the full rate. Most of this rate might perhaps be obtained by 
individual demand, if made by many of the women and supported by 
readiness to leave. Mr. Hobson tells of success in united demand by the 
women of single factories. 

Women's wages in British cotton, woolen, and hosiery trades rose 42 per 
cent between i860 and 1890, while in the trades not unionized and less 
skilled the wages of women fell, remained stationary, or rose but little. 
Among employers of low social grade there have been many cases of dis- 
charge of women for joining unions. London match girls at starvation pay 
were locked out in 1889 to force them to retract a published statement that 
was true. The indignant public took up the contest, w^hich grew into the 
famous strike of dockers. Many separate unions of British women have 
failed since the first appeared in 1874, but enough have survived, though 
small, to make the results considerable. Women are now less afraid, and 
the will to organize is useful otherwise. (G. Drage, "The Labor Problem.") 

In America unorganized women have struck occasionally, and by the 
diligent organizing of 1901-03, in the brisk demand for labor, unions com- 
posed of women alone have been formed in Chicago wath a membership 
reaching 30,000. Nearly every one of them has raised wages 10 to 20 per 
cent, besides shortening the day in some cases and improving conditions. 
With some of them strikes were necessary, being bravely persisted in by 
poorly paid women as long as six weeks. Scrub women secured a rate of 
18 cents per hour and an eight-hour day. Box makers and street car ticket 
sellers were also quite successful. {American Federationist, Aug. 1903.) 



480 Getting a Living. 

about all in which women are equally efficient with men at the 
same work, and get equal pay.^ 

Where the Difference in Pay is Large it is based on clear 
difference of labor value. An employer would not hire men if 
women's work at half the pay would answer as well. In British 
cigar factories there are cases of men getting 4 to 5 shillings 
per 1,000, with women in the same room getting but 2 shillings. 
The women make an inferior grade. In a large printing house 
of Massachusetts in 1883, women were paid only 29 cents per 
1,000 ems for type-setting against 39 cents for men, because the 
women worked an hour or two less per day, could not set up a 
book quickly, could not handle bad copy or complicated matter 
(for lack of experience and ability), and required more waiting 
on than men. Rent for extra space and interest on capital in 
extra machinery, together with extra cost of superintendence 
and book-keeping, would prevent an employer from paying 300 
women a piece rate as high as that of 200 men, doing the same 
amount of work. In Edinburgh women t3^pe-setters get a little 
over one-third of the men's union rate, being employed in small 
shops, on cheap and easy grades of work. In time work the 
inferiority of women's pay is marked, being based on the low 
average of their sex, and not giving swift workers the chance 
they have under piece work. 

^Much of the information in this chapter is taken from an article by M. B. 
Hammond in Political Science Quarterly, Sept. 1900; from an article by- 
Carroll D. Wright in The Forum, July, 1892; and from Sidney and Beatrice 
Webb's book of 1898, "Problems of Modern Industry." 

Among New England textile workers the men have strong unions, to 
which, at some places and in some lines of work, the women belong also. 
Cases are most numerous in the South in which women earn more than 
men, and the excess of earnings by men there is smaller than their excess 
in New England. This may be due to the absence in the South, the industry 
being new there, of a settled factory class with a custom of lower wages 
for women; to equality as to unionism, neither sex being organized; to the 
stronger demand necessary there to establish among women the new occupa- 
tion of factory work ; and to greater adaptability of women for textile work 
where the men are wholly inexperienced. Wages per day are lower in the 
South, but labor cost per spindle is somewhat lower in Massachusetts. 

How Much Men and Women Earn. An Ohio report for 1901 shows 
that, on the average each, per week, 6,920 women, in the three largest cities, 
earned $4.83, worked S7V2 hours, paid $2.44 for board and lodging, and 
saved 14 cents — the number depending upon them for support being 1,606. 



Wage Earning by Women. 481 

The Reasons Summarized for Lower Wages to Women, 

where women and men do work of about the same kind, incKide 
the following: i. For lack of physical strength women's work 
is less in quantity, less to be depended upon (by reason of sick- 
ness), less suitable for hurrying, or for assigning to other than 
the routine in time of slackness or emergency. 2. In the look- 
ing forward by women to marriage, an occupation by most of 
them is felt to be temporary, and hence is not learned or fol- 

In 1900, in 87 industries of Massachusetts, of the grown women in wage 
earning, 17 per cent received under $5 a week, 16 per cent $5 to $6, 20 per 
cent $6 to $7, 15 per cent $7 to $8, 12 per cent $8 to $9, 9 per cent $9 to 
$10, 7 per cent $io to $12, 3 per cent $12 to $15, i per cent $15 to $20. 
For the men the respective percentages were reversed, being only 4 per cent 
in the class under $5, 4 per cent for the next, and then 7 per cent, 10 per 
cent, 14 per cent, 16 per cent, 18 per cent for the class $12 to $15, then 14 per 
cent, and finally 4 per cent earning over $20. In no other state, perhaps, 
excepting far western states having very few workers, are average wages 
higher for either sex. In 1901 percentages upward were a fraction larger. 

Wages in Different Countries. In 25 occupations, consisting mostly of 
skilled trades but including common laborers, the average daily pay in lead- 
ing cities was found, in a careful investigation by the U. S. Labor Depart- 
ment, to be as follows: In the United States, $2.20 (gold) in 1870, $2.34 in 
1880, $2.53 in 1890, and $2.46 in 1896. In Great Britain these figures were 
$1.30, $1.37, $1.42, $1.49. In France (Paris) they were $1.06, $1.21, $1.31, 
$1.33. In Belgium (Liege) they were 59^/4 c, 62c., 63c., 66c. The highest 
daily pay was $5.99 for railway engineers at New Orleans in 1896, and 
$4 for masons at New York, the latter earning $1.69 in London, $1.54 in 
Paris and 71c. in Liege. (Labor Bulletin No. 18.) New York masons now 
(May, 1903) get $5.60, and carpenters $4.50, per day of eight hours. Mr. 
Giffen estimated in 1893 that a fourth of British male workers received less 
than $4.87 a week. After Belgium, for low wages, come Italy and Russia, 
and finally China and India, where carpenters earn 25 to 40 cents a day 
and farm laborers about ten cents (page 135). 

Women's Wages in the Past. In English cotton mills (Lancashire); 
in 1886, II per cent of 67,843 females working full time earned under $2.43 
a week, and only 12 per cent earned over $4.87 (less than i per cent over 
$6.08), the average being $3.20. Since then these wages have risen 10 to 20 
per cent. Cost of food is much higher in England than in America, but 
rent is cheaper, and common clothing costs about the same. In 1833, when 
food and clothing cost more than at present, the average wage in Scotch 
flax spinning, for women 18 to 25, was $1.42 a week — $2.70 in 1896. In 
Belfast these figures were only $1.05 and $2.09. (U. S. Labor Bulletin 
No. 17.) In 1894 London sack sewers averaged $1.15 (one earned only 27c.), 
and Luton straw pi alters $1,09. 
31 



4^2 Getting a Living. 

lowed with zeal, while to a man it is his life work, and his one 
source of success; this makes women's work inferior to men's 
in quality, and makes the worker an amateur rather than a pro- 
fessional. 3. But a greater effect of this lack of skill is to turn 
the women into easy work on grades of product of low value, 
such as cheap shoes and underwear, and to such simple process- 
es as folding circulars and pasting on labels. The products of 
these kinds of labor may not be largely wanted at higher wage 
cost per unit ; and if they were wanted, the pay could not be 
raised until fewer women stood ready to do the work at the low 
rate. Over-supply of v^omen workers is continued by the im- 
propriety of their leaving home, and the lack of means and 
capacity for doing so, besides their special reluctance to talk 
freely to one another of work and wages, and their special 
unwillingness to get more pay by turning to work less genteel. 
4. Hence, the low pay of women is due also to their submissive 
acceptance of what is offered, a necessary attitude at first in 
their knocking for admission to kinds of work new to them, 
without having other kinds as good to fall back upon. This, 
with other reasons, has prevented their forming unions for 
better bargaining on wages, leaving each to deal singly and 
unaided with the employer. 5. For these reasons, not being a 
voter, and not having the social standing that is usually neces- 
sary to call out men's chivalry, the working woman has had to 
give way in her wages to the employer's profits. A ten-hour 
day for factory women and children was secured only by law, 
vv^hile men, in their own trades, had secured it long before un- 
aided. 6. A lower standard of living among women, based 
partly on physical weakness, and continuing down to the pres- 
ent from their utter subjection in barbarous ages, enables a 
woman to live on lower wages than a man and still keep up to 
the level of her class — still be able to work satisfactorily for the 
employer, and not be regarded by the public as one whom it 
must at once assist. She eats less (but would gain strength 
and money by eating more — of meat, not cake), and is expected 
to learn less, do less, and accomplish less in life, seldom being 
responsible like a man for the support of others. This content- 
ment with little, which checks striving for more, is added to, in 
its effect to lower wages, by such assistance as free board and 
gifts of clothing and money, received by many a working girl 



Wage Earning by Women. 483 

from her family or friends. The more she is thus assisted, the 
lower the wages with which she can get along. 7. Women are 
less desirable to hire because, as a rule, they must do routine 
work. They lack the business grasp necessary for manage- 
ment, and the ability to superintend others. This fact reduces 
their bargaining power, and keeps down their wages, by dimin- 
ishing the positions to which they can rise. Women must also 
have more considerate treatment than men — neater quarters to 
work in, a better class of fellow workers, less driving, and more 
assistance in many ways. Hence, in net advantage their work 
is usually lacking unless obtained at pay much lower than that 
of men.^ 

The Remedies for Low Wages to Women differ but little 
from the remedies for low wages to men. Most depends upon 
the girl herself, counseled by her parents and friends. She 
should turn her thoughts in school while young toward the 
occupation for which she seems best fitted. By determining 
not to marry until about twenty-five years old, unless an espe- 
cially good opportunity occurred, she might so concentrate her 
purpose on her work as to become highly efficient by the age of 
twenty-one. Then, by deserving and watching for the best 
positions in reach, she might earn good wages for several years, 
and if not married might make her life a creditable success 
industrially. If born with talent or business capability, she 
might reach high attainments, as many women are now doing 
in many occupations, some of them as independent employers. 
If not thus endowed, she would still get the most from the 
capability she had. With many of the girls who fail to hold 
positions, the reasons are lack of training and deficient educa- 
tion. 

Women Workers Should be Preferred by Public Opinion, 
it seems (which now fully recognizes the propriety of their 
being wage earners), in all work that they can do with an effi- 

^Reasons for Hiring Women. The inclusive one is that their labor is 
cheaper per unit of output in their kinds of work. Reasons into which this 
one may be divided are that thej' are more easily controlled, are less liable 
to strike, do not drink, are neater, more careful and polite, and better 
adapted to the work, and that more of them are ready to be hired. Some 
employers say also that women learn more quickly, and are more industrious 
and rapid. This is doubtless true in their special kinds of work. 



484 Getting a Living. 

ciency approaching that of men.^ Growth of demand for their 
services, a growth to be promoted thus by public opinion, comes 
next to a woman's own zeal and efficiency as a force for raising 

^Choosing Work Others Do Not Want. It seems also that public opin- 
ion should discourage the practice by which some girls from well-to-do 
homes get pocket money by temporarily doing work in stores and offices at 
low pay and in amateur style, thus lessening the employment, wages, and 
desirableness of girls who must wholly support themselves. Far from 
being idle, however, the former should develop ambition and character by 
taking up work artistic or otherwise difficult, and not within reach of 
those by whom the ordinary work is needed. When desiring to teach, they 
should enter the higher fields requiring expensive preparation. This is an 
idea of Mrs. Van Vorst in "The Woman Who Toils." It applies also to 
men of talent and opportunity, though usually they are led by ambition as 
far upward in difficulty as they are prepared to go. Such a man, desiring 
conscientiously to do his best for society, and to compete the least with 
others less fortunate, should start a new industry needed, or improve an old 
one that was backward. But, as Mr. Hobson points out, in refutation of 
Carlyle, Ruskin, and the Christian Socialists, it would be unsound for such 
a man, even if he were financially able, to consider society's good by refrain- 
ing from securing money profit for himself. Excepting various kinds of 
teaching, supplying anything not fully paid for involves the waste and 
blight of common charity. Though the love of money is the root of all evil, 
it is about as essential in society as the force of gravitation is in the uni- 
verse. Gravitation causes evil too, in the crashing of trains and sinking of 
ships. 

The Proportion of Women Desirable to Employ is Fast Increasing 
in some portions of America, in the growth of underwear and clothing 
manufacture by machinery, especially of garments for women and children : 
and in many kinds of business, change of process is making more employment 
for women, besides larger openings for them in unchanged occupations they 
have recently entered. In Minnesota manufacturing, during ten years to 
1900, men wage earners increased only 5.3 per cent, but women wage earn- 
ers increased 73.3 per cent. Doubtless many new factories employing 
women had been established. In the whole country the difference was many 
times less, these figures being 23.9 for men and 28.3 for women. In th0 
United States, in 1900, 18.8 per cent (17.0 in 1890, 14.7 in 1880, 13.14 in 
1870) of all females over ten years of age were engaged in gainful occupa- 
tions — 5,313,912 in number, who formed 14.3 per cent of the total female 
population of all ages, rising from 12.7 per cent in 1890. Of the total, both 
male and female, in ail gainful occupations, the females rose from 14.7 per 
cent in 1870 to 15.2 in 1880, 17.2 in 1890, and 18.2 in 1900, the proportion 
of males decreasing in each period accordingly. In manufacturing, of the 
total for both sexes, the females rose from 14.4 per cent in 1870 to 18.5 in 
i88o, and to 20.2 in 1890, but fell back to 18.5 in 1900. In 1900, 39.4 per 



Wage Earning by Women. 485 

her wages. Perhaps in such work the women, by reason of 
their lower pay, will generally be preferred by the employer 

cent of all women gainfully occupied were in domestic service, against 42.6 
per cent in 1890, and 44.7 per cent in 1880 — such a decrease as might have 
been expected in the prevalence of the servant problem. The percentage in 
manufacturing fell from 26.3 in 1890 to 24.7 in 1900, which fact, with the 
increase of the total percentage, indicates the entrance of women into new 
lines of work. The 126 women classified in 1900 as plumbers, and the 196 
as blacksmiths, were probably office help, though work by women in mines, 
prohibited in England sixty years ago on grounds of morality, still con- 
tinues to a small and decreasing extent in Belgium. Women as barmaids 
are still common in England, as in Europe generally, and in the sweated 
chain and nail making of England not a few women still handle the grimy 
iron. But in English farming employment of women and children has 
nearly ceased, and it is decreasing in Scotland. By Massachusetts labor 
reports, covering 4,473 factories, in 75 industries, the females were 33 per 
cent of all employees in 1885, and 33.45 per cent in 1891 ; from 1865 to 1875 
the increase of percentage was 7, but from 1875 to 1885 the increase was 
only 2. In cotton manufacturing, females were 55 per cent of all in 
1885, but only 48.2 per cent in 1899. In Lowell cotton mills they were 79 
per cent in 1835, but 63 per cent in 1893. Of all gainfully occupied in 
Massachusetts females were 22.13 per cent in 1870, 26.08 in 1885, 27.12 in 
1895, and 27.23 in 1900. The females gainfully occupied were 17.03 per 
cent in 1870, and 22.88 per cent in 1900, of all females of all ages, the 
percentage in 1900 being 18.72 for natives and 31.77 for foreign born. Of 
all females occupied in 1900 the married were 11.72 per cent. Of those 
over ten years old, in 1900, 80.13 per cent of males, and 28.14 per cent of 
females, were industrially occupied. 

In the ten leading groups of British manufacturing industries the 
women in number were 45 per cent of the men in 1841, 85 in 1861, 93 in 
1881, and 92 in 1891. In Great Britain the percentage of women at work 
for gain remained about the same in the total for all occupations from i88i 
to 1891, inaicating that there the change from household to factpry produc- 
tion is completed. Out of every loo females over ten years of age, the 
number industrially occupied was 34.05 in 1881, and 34.42 in 1891 — just 
double the percentage of the United States in 1890. The percentage of males 
fell from 83.24 to 83.10, that of the United States being 77.3 in 1890. 
{U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 1.) In England and Wales, in 1891, of every 
100 females between fifteen and twenty, 68.6 were engaged in some gainful 
occupation. In 32 cities the number ranged from 68.8 up to 95.3. In all 
gainful occupations the women are 22.3 per cent of the men in the United 
States, 36.7 in England, and 54.9 in Austria. {Am. Jour. Sociology, March, 
1903, p. 702.) 

A Decrease in the Number of Married Women Employed in British 
factories indicates higher wages to husbands, and better support from them. 



4^6 Getting a Living. 

himself ; but a ready public approval may be materially, ujeful 
in overcoming natural prejudices against change, and in lessen- 
ing the trouble of giving to women the positions of men who 
ought to be doing more difficult work at higher wages. This 
attitude of friendly encouragement toward women workers, 
evincing hearty respect for them in their praiseworthy progress 
in practical usefulness and self-development, is all the assist- 
ance they need. It is harmful to them — weakening their self- 
respect, lowering the quality of their work, and tending to pau- 
perize — to dwell on their woes, and to become too solicitous for 
them in a charitable way. The best safeguard of the woman 
worker is her own sense of independence^ and personal respon- 
bility.^ As society cannot furnish her a chaperon, it must not 

Employment of married women in factories causes bad homes and neglect 
of children; but except in unsuitable trades, forbidding such employment 
by law, considered by Connecticut in 1894, would be less desirable than 
action by public opinion (page 469), together with laws punishing hus- 
bands for non-support. Forbidding factory work by married women would 
also make harder the lot of married women compelled to work for hire, 
would increase wage-lowering home work, and would lead to concealment 
of marriage and to concubinage. The latter result is said to have appeared 
in the British and the American postal service, from the rule not to employ 
married women. This rule is justified in these cases by the need of self- 
supporters for good positions (page 477) ; also by the fact that the high pay 
would tempt the husband to depend on the wife, and the latter to neglect 
her main duty of home making. In a number of British cotton factories, 
in 1894, out of a total of 176,456 females employed, 4,841 were widows, and 
34,150 (19.4 per cent) were wives. But working wives were most numerous 
where wages were highest, following factory work for life for the sake of a 
larger living. It is the more abundant support of Americans, and the 
residence of so many of them in farming states, that makes the per- 
centage here of women working for wages (or engaged in business) so much 
lower than in England, though our percentage increases as the country grows 
older and industry more complex — a fact shown above in the approach of 
Massachusetts percentages to those of England. Of all women gainfully 
occupied in America in 1890, the married were 13.2 per cent. 

^Marj^ E. Richmond, "Handbook of Sociological Information," edited by 
W. H. Tolman, 1894. 

^Sympathy Must be Given Guardedly.— "It would seem at times as if 
the workshop meant only a form of preparation for the hospital, the work- 
house, and the prison, since the workers therein become inoculated with trade 
diseases, mutilated by trade appliances, and corrupted by trade associates, 
till no healthy fibre, mental, moral, or physical, remains," (Helen Campbell, 
The Arena, July, 1893.) 

In this strain runs the thought of socialists of all grades, and of many 



Wage Earning by Women. 487 

lead her to need one. From her own family a girl intending to 
be self-supporting should receive as little aid as possible in 
money or direct support, but rather assistance into good posi- 
tions, with encouragement to make her best effort, and to take 
pride in success. Partially supporting her causes her to remain 
a child — to give up helplessly to inefficient work and low wages, 
and to get in after life a poor living if not married before her 
partial support ceases. Kindness to the extent of much giving 
or helping, as in free board or continued supply of clothing, or 
in shielding from the responsibility of wage bargaining, — is 
pauperizing to any who are supposed to be self-supporting, even 
to one's own children unless they are strong and ambitious in 
character. The growing change in the ideal of parents, by 
which they strive to fit daughters for honorable self-support, 
rather than to save money to leave them as an inheritance, has 
a beneficent effect, both upon the daughters and upon society. 

In Enacting Laws to Preserve the Health and Morals of 
women in factories and stores — to prohibit unreasonable hours 
of work, to require seats for resting, and clean, well ventilated 
work rooms — public opinion in some states has yet much to do. 
But making such laws for women that are not to be applied to 
men must be done judiciously, to avoid lessening the desirable- 
ness of women as workers, and thus lowering their pay. As 



preachers and other reformers who, In emphasizing sympathy and con- 
science, let warmth of heart get the better of coolness of head, and thus fail 
in the God-given task of getting understanding, with all their getting, in- 
stead of heedlessly or indolently assuming that certain ideas are right 
because they seem kind and religious. One going out to work in the mood 
of the above quotation is foredoomed to failure, like a child going out on ice 
in a trembling fear of falling. Fortunately, there are few workers, includ- 
ing women and children, who do not resent a sympathy that implies ina- 
bility to do their work and take caje of themselves. Boys and girls of 
worthy ambition are eager to go to work, and are proud to be seen in the 
workers' ranks. Not many of the few who seek higher education regard 
their working as other than a stepping stone. Only a small percentage of 
all workers differ materially in self-sufficiency from electric linemen, whose 
work in zero weather evokes not sympathy, but admiration for their splendid 
vigor and courage. The large additional regulation by law that is needed 
for dangerous trades might do more harm than good if so applied as to 
weaken self-reliance. One possessing this quality will usually fare better 
in bad conditions than another without it will fare in good. 



488 Getting a Living. 

they become more intelligent and capable, they will be better 
able to take care of themselves. Public opinion can encourage 
them in this, and can show in business patronage, with con- 
siderable effect, approval of employers who voluntarily treat 
well their women workers. 

Learning How to Get the Highest Price for Her Work is to 
a woman an especially important part of the process of master- 
ing an occupation. This means that, not in place of doing their 
best work, but as supplementary, women workers should act 
together for mutual advancement, steadfastly refraining from 
getting positions by willingness to take lower pay, and com- 
bining where practicable into formal unions.^ They should be 

^Women in Trade Unions are found chiefly in textile manufacturing, 
both in England and America. Outside of this great industry, in which 
the two sexes are most evenly matched in efficiency, and outside of the gar- 
ment making and sho€ industries, and of clerking in stores, — few women 
are in unions with men, and the unions composed of women alone are few 
and small, though the total number of women unionists has been fast increas- 
ing in the spread of unionism during the last three years in America. The 
reason is, not that men now deny them admission and try thus to exclude 
them from the trade, as men were long disposed to do, but that women are 
unable to earn the high union rate, and hence must do a lower grade of 
work than men, getting less pay usually than men non-unionists. The Lon- 
don union of printers decided in 1887 to admit women, but only one woman 
joined in the next ten years. The case is about the same wuth printers' 
unions in America. Women are welcome to join, especially where they 
might take the w^ork of unionists, but except in small cities, where the regular 
union rate is low, the women cannot do as t}'pe-setters the work of union 
shops, while the union pledge would prevent them from working in other 
shops, and thus shut them out of a union town. Unions of women alone, 
somewhat rare as yet, may be expected to increase. Organization of wom.en 
has long been actively encouraged by the American Federation of Labor. 
Unions of servant girls were organized in 1901-3 in Chicago and some 
other cities. In this occupation, without unions, women are the most inde- 
pendent of all workers. The demand for help exceeds the supply, the 
service being socially objectionable; and the servant is not only a better 
bargainer as a rule than the lady of the house, but by her leaving can 
inflict more damage than the lady can inflict by discharge. 

In 1901, 144 British unions included females as members, the total of 
them being 120,078, or 6.2 per cent of the total membership of all British 
unions. Only 28 unions, with 8,285 members, consisted of women alone. 
Of the female unionists 89.9 per cent were in the textile trades. In the state 
and city of New York, in 1903, women in unions numbered 16,302, being 



Wage Earning by Women. 489 

on the alert for chances to have their wages raised, to get better 
positions, and in some cases to pass into higher occupations. 
Many native New England girls have risen from the factory to 
be teachers, book-keepers, etc. Factory work there long ago 
passed chiefly to foreigners, who in turn have also been rising 
to better occupations (p. 376), the Irish giving way to French 
Canadians, and the latter now giving way to Armenians and 
Greeks. In many cases, no doubt, desirable women workers 
might so draw on the competition of employers to hire them as 
fully to raise their regular pay, where it is now lower, to the 
level of the pay of men doing the same work, in proportion to 
the respective value of service rendered. The new ideal, that a 
w^oman should strive self-reliantly to make the most of her life, 
will lead an increasing number of them to approach a man's 
standard of mental and industrial efficiency. In four of the 
Rocky Mountain states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho — 
and in Australia, woman's full enfranchisement as a voter 
secures for her more recognition as a worker. 

Home Making and Rearing of Children must continue, by 
nature and common sense, to be the calling of most women. 
But it is well that in their growing freedom of choice those 
women called by ability or circumstances to other pursuits may 
obey the call effectively, and thus benefit society. These may 
easily equal or surpass men in efficiency, and many who later 
marry may do likewise if they have talent, since for good work 
by them long experience is often unnecessary. While the mar- 
ried woman should be careful not to tempt the husband to 
depend on her income,^ and should not lower the wages of self- 
supporting women by doing home work for pocket money at 
less than full rates, it is nevertheless desirable for her to be 
prepared to get a living in case of her husband's sickness or 
death, or of his being too drunken to be worthy of her sacrifice 
in continuing to live with him. Such preparation, which is 

4.5 per cent of the total, 357,234. They are 25.4 per cent of all in garment 
making, 44.1 per cent in textile trades, and 2i per cent in tobacco trades- 

^By a New York law a man must share his wages with his wife, but she 
may choose whether to share hers with him. This and other similar laws are 
necessary to complete women's emancipation from servitude reaching back 
to that of the Indian squaw, who does the hard work, almost as a slave. 



490 Getting a Living. 

hardly less useful in independence after marriage than before, 
is one good effect of wage earning in early womanhood, and it 
comes also from the married woman's capable management of 
a household. The working by women in stores and factories, 
instead of in the home as formerly, will not antagonize but will 
promote home life and civilization, if here, as in other changes 
due to invention, people learn to avoid the bad results and to 
secure the good. 

To Regard Self-Support as an Advance of Womanhood, 
not viewing it as a necessary but deplorable evil of these latter 
days, — is another duty resting on society, a duty which thought- 
ful minds take pleasure in recognizing. For an advance of 
woman self-support really is, similar to the advance of a slave 

The Well Supported Girl Who Works by Choice. Mrs. Van Vorst is 
being quoted as teaching that a girl who works by choice, when her parents 
are ready to support her, is a snob, prompted to work by vanity in a desire 
for better dress and more luxuries; and President Roosevelt's introduction 
to Mrs. Van Vorst's book is being construed as endorsing this idea, on the 
ground that a woman's highest mission is to be a good wife and mother. 
But to prepare for fulfilling that highest mission worthily — to make the most 
of her possibilities as a wife as well as a spinster — nothing is so effective as 
purposeful (not frivolous) wage earning in early womanhood, when some 
attention is also given to housekeeping with a view to marriage. It is not 
that marriage may be avoided, unless special talent fits her for a professional 
life, but to improve her chances, that a girl chooses by working to dress 
better and to have money and capability of her own. This choice is prefer- 
able to the animal method of relying passively on the attractions of mere 
sex, and, in view of the independence gained, is now preferable to the good 
old way of winning a husband with household industry and a stock of bed- 
ding and linen. Because of woman's having been compelled for ages to 
rely so far on sex for a living, Mrs. Stetson ("Women and Economics") 
reasonably believes that sex became unduly important, with the result that 
by abnormal passions society has been cursed immeasurably. Discussing 
this thought, W. M. Salter {Atlantic, Jan. 1902) says if woman could sup- 
port herself, and hence be attracted to man in the natural wa)-, without 
having to depend on that attraction for a living, she and her descendants 
might in time become normal healthful beings, no longer subject to ungov- 
erned passions. Moreover, women have not developed efficiency because 
their work has been done in the home, not in competition for people who 
could choose the good and reject the bad. 

The fallacy of the idea that, to leave more work for the poor, no woman 
not compelled to support herself should engage in wage earning, has been 
set forth in this chapter, and is further discussed in the chapter on prison 
labor. 



Wage Earning by Women. 491 

when set free. As the risks of self-direction must be taken with 
its gains, self-support is a necessary accompaniment of release 
from a subjection that was somewhat degrading to all women 
not specially attractive, by reason of wealth or personal charms. 
As previously stated, most women, before wage earning with 
them became a custom above the humbler class, had too little 
liberty to decline a proposal of marriage. Marrying for the 
sake of a living, which then was very common and is too much 
so yet, has been called a kind of prostitution. Unreserved ac- 
ceptance of one another for better or worse, v/ith the centering 
of all hopes in the family, made then, and makes now in Europe 
where matches are formed by the parents, an average of domes- 
tic life far happier perhaps than that of the present easy divorce 
period in America; but nevertheless, the purest elements of 
companionship, in the holiest sense, are most likely to exist 
where the woman accepting a marriage proposal has other 
means of support. By a return from the light regard in which 
marriage is now held by many, to full recognition of its sacred- 
ness, and by further growth of the sentiment that an educated 
and skillful woman is to be preferred as a wife, the race will be 
recruited in larger proportion from its best elements.^ 

In View of All the Facts stated in this chapter, it will be 
seen that the entrance of w^omen generally into gainful occupa- 
tions is a necessary step in their own and in society's progress, 
that there are good reasons for the low level of women's wages, 
and that sure means are at hand for overcoming the disadvan- 
tages in which women are at first placed by the change to wage 
earning. 

A Solution of the Servant Problem. Sensible public opin- 
ion, even in the most conservative communities of the South, 
has established the propriety of wage earning by women. In 
the towns and smaller cities of the North, young women now 
seem to incur no loss at all in social standing by reason of their 
working in stores and offices. To such work has been extend- 
ed, but hardly yet to work in factories, the respectability of 
teaching.^ Among those in stores and offices are not a few of 

^See Carroll D. Wright's article previously cited. 

^Marion Harland gives in The Independent of Jan. 23, 1902, some recollec- 
tions of the time when teaching and sewing were the only respectable occu- 



492 Getting a Living. 

the most attractive young ladies in the community, including 
some from well-to-do families. Many of them are socially 
advanced by their working, which not only provides money for 
tasteful dressing, but gives, through contact with others, educa- 
tion and refinement.^ There is another badly needed service 
which ruling public opinion might render to American society. 
This is nothing less than to settle the servant question. The 
chronic complaint regarding it is useless. The reason of the 
trouble is no mystery, as has been pointed out repeatedly in 
magazine articles.^ Girls take work in stores and factories, at 
wages barely large enough to live on, in order that they may be 
off duty in the evening, and may escape being looked down 

patlons for a woman of some gentility, and these only when there was no 
male relative to support her. "Many a young fellow resigned all hope of 
nome and independence for himself, because his sisters and his cousins and 
his aunts looked to him for maintenance, and clung to him as barnacles to 
the hull of a ship." Was not that a demoralizing dependence, and a blind 
waste of women's power to work? Miss Collett, an English authority, 
urges the opening by public opinion of new occupations for middle class 
women who fail to marry and have not been educated for work. It seems 
that the field of genteel occupations is narrower in England than in Amer- 
ica. In England there is more effort to keep up the style of one's class, with 
both women and men. 

^It Was Not Gainful Occupation That Made Women Mannish, but 
their having to force recognition of their right to be physicians, or to take 
other new lines of work. When their right to an occupation is acknowledged, 
they lose by following it none of their charms. Miss Sophie Becker, an 
organizer at Chicago for the American Federation of Labor, said in 1903 
that "the working girl now marries younger than ten years ago, and her 
chances are very much better." This statement is gratifying, indicating 
that working brings her now into less disfavor with men. Mrs. Van 
Vorst's statement, that the working girl is more and more unwilling to 
marry, is gratifying also when the reason is that she values herself more 
highly, and hence is more careful in her choice, but is not gratifying when 
she objects to home making, and continues to work for the sake of dress and 
style. The national labor department's report of 1888 said that women's 
chances of marriage were increased by their working. The fact that now a 
larger proportion of women fail to marry than was the case formerly is 
partly a cause for their working, in having to depend on self-support, but is 
also a result of their working, in not having to depend on a husband. 

^An excellent article on this subject, by Rev. Alden W. Quimby, appeared 
in The Forum, June, 1901 ; another by Inez A. Goodman in The Independ- 
ent, Feb. 13, 1902. 



Wage Earning by Women. 493 

upon as menial servants. Can they be blamed? Is not a 
young woman's social standing regarded as more important 
than the snug home and full table she enjoys, or than the little 
money she can save? And can any person have self-respect, 
essential for command of respect from others, unless his ability 
for firm assertion of independence is evident, in the background 
at least, and unless he avoids, when not making sacrifices for 
high principle, the blighting effect of being looked dov/n upon ? 
Now it seems that an object lesson applicable to this question 
may be observed in the occupation of nursing. It too was 
menial not long ago. But heroines, like Florence Nightingale 
and Clara Barton, raised it to a noble profession, to which some 
of the choicest spirits among the daughters of men now devote 
themselves. Is there not a similar call for science and enthu- 
siasm in well-to-do homes, presided over by wives and mothers 
weak and weary with changing servants? Do not authorities 
agree that one of humanity's greatest needs is to be taught how 
to cook ? 

A Field for the Heroine. It would seem that a young lady 
of established social standing, feeling a call to help humanity, 
as well as the desire to earn money and be independent, — might 
study scientific cookery and housekeeping (an approach to a 
fine art) to a degree of proficiency surpassing that of the lady 
of the best kept home, and might then offer her services to take 
charge of a house during the entertainment of visitors, or for 
weddings and parties. The start could thus be made by young 
ladies of standing, at good pay in wealthy homes. By changing 
the term girl or servant to housekeeper, or to some other word 
without a menial suund — a change often recommended — and by 
changing the attitude toward the young woman accordingly, 
service in many homes not wealthy might soon be made unob- 
jectionable to a self-respecting young woman supporting her- 
self. With the occupation thus made respectable, the lowest 
wages paid in a factory or store, $3 to $5 a week, would secure 
girls of such capability as are seldom found now in house ser- 
vice. They would get also their board and room, would avoid 
the prolonged strain necessary to earn the same money wages 
at piece work in factories, and would become master house- 
keepers for their own homes at marriage. Ladies now paying 
$2.50 to $4.50 a week (the rates in Jackson, Mich.) for such 



494 Getting a Living, 

girls as they can get, might afford to add a dollar or two to 
obtain girls they could depend upon without oversight. 

The Need for Professional Housekeepers. In a few years 
there might come about a decided change in the servant ques- 
tion. Relief of over-worried wives and mothers would bring 
relief of the over-crowded ranks of factory and store girls, 
perhaps raising the wages of these. The present house ser- 
vants, to hold positions, would gradually find it necessary to 
meet the higher standard of efficiency. Those who failed to do 
so could work in laundries and factories, and as second girls in 
the larger households. In many cases the new class of young 
women trained in housekeeping might save enough to balance 
their wages by stopping waste, and by averting sickness in the 
family. The general benefit to all concerned would appear in 
the pleasure of living with all the house work done on time, in 
the best manner, and with nobody worried or tired out. 

Is Not This Change Worth an Effort? If not this plan, 
what? So long as the present cloud of disgrace hangs over 
house service, it will never be done by the class of girls who 
alone can be depended upon to do it properly. This social 
stigma is the main cause of the trouble. Wages would need 
to be raised but little, though the higher class of girls would 
require respectful treatment, a room not needlessly plain, and a 
reasonable allowance of time off duty. What lady could con- 
scientiously desire to gratify herself by depriving a girl of these 
rights ? A few influential ladies, if they will, can establish this 
reform in a town. Is there any other way in which they could 
benefit society so substantially?^ 

^Is It Chimerical? This solution of the servant problem was pro- 
nounced chimerical by a professor who read the manuscript of these pages. 
His grounds were that it is in the nature of ladies to look down upon their 
servants, and to withhold from them the considerable measure of social 
recognition required in the plan outlined above. So far as that is true, 
complaint of servants is as idle as complaint of the weather. What the 
ladies have to bear from inefficiency and waste, they pay for the satisfaction 
of looking down on their girls. The exchange is square, and discussion is 
useless if the ladies are not ready to be admonished to do better themselves. 
But as we have been excusing everybody in this book, we must point out 
that only in recent times has public opinion classed with the evils of human 
nature the blighting principle of caste. A survival of former Ideals is the 
feeling that a servant— even though she be a teacher taking temporarily a 



Wage Earning by Women. 495 

A Start in This Direction, caused by natural demand, has 
already been made. In homes in New York, below the grade 

sick sister's place, and is more intelligent than the lady served — should don 
the white cap, and pose in a servile attitude, and receive her father, a col- 
lege president, in the kitchen. These notions of keeping to one's station, 
and of hard and fast lines between classes, are jarred by the growing prev- 
alence of the sound ideas that every person's station is the best place he can 
reach, and that when it suits him to work awhile in a lower grade his 
rightful rank is less lowered than elevated. In Europe there is less trouble 
over the servant question, there being present everywhere a servant class, 
who learn their trade and follow it contentedly. From this European class 
come many of the best servants in America. 

Advantage of Fewer Hours for Servants. Instead of , the present 
evening and Sunday work of servants, with but one or two free afternoons 
a week, their time on duty could be reduced to nine hours a day (to half 
this time on Sunday), without lessening th'e total amount of work done, 
and with benefit to the family. Having a servant continually at one's beck 
and call, and being relieved from the necessity of caring for one's self apart 
from the important work of the home, is harmful to the character and habits 
of the family served, since it involves a change from useful cooking and 
sweeping to lackey or body service, which is hardly to be defended for 
any one not sick. The harm to the servant is that the atmosphere of sub- 
jection fills her life so completely that the spirit of freedom is cowed or 
crushed. One strong reason for Sunday rest, and for few hours of labor, 
is that prolonging the absence of the workers from the employer's control 
over them while on duty increases their self-respect — their independence of 
and equality with him, their capability as citizens. Miss Addams says there 
can be no solution of the servant problem until ladies break through the old 
status of mistress and servant — unsuited to liberty and democracy — and dis- 
place the narrow code of duty to one's family and circle with the new code 
of duty to all. 

"We Will Never Give Up Our Evenings and Sundays," was a com- 
mon objection to house work that was given in the Massachusetts bureau's 
inquiry in 1902 among servants, factory girls, and store girls. Other serious 
objections were the loneliness of servant life, and the absence of chances for 
self-improvement and for rising to better positions. Not one of the ser- 
vants interviewed was American born. "The feeling seemed to be, not that 
the work was degrading or unpleasant, but that a girl must have lost her 
self-esteem who would sell all her time but half of one afternoon in each 
week, who would be called a servant, be willing to receive her friends in a 
kitchen, and who, instead of learning her trade and being left to do as she 
had learned, must be subjected to the whims of each employer." {Inde- 
pendent, Nov. 13, 1902.) 

The College Woman in Domestic Service. Miss Lillian Pettingill, who, 
after graduating from Mt. Holyoke in 1898 spent about a year as a 



49^ Getting a Living. 

of those having men as butlers and chefs, the employment of 
professional women housekeepers is said to be increasing. In 
some of the smaller cities married ladies of talent in cookery, 
and moving in society well above the middle, now undertake 
catering for parties, and rank in the assemblage with the guests. 
The need for such help is so great that traditions of caste will 
gradually give way before common sense. In New Zealand 
there is a somewhat numerous class of servants called lady 
helpers, who are treated by the lady of the house as social 
equals, but who do as much work on the average as the ordi- 
nary servants, and at a third less pay, making the reduction for 

Ik 
servant in five homes, worked an average of fifteen hours each week day, 

and of twelve hours on Sunday. One important factor in the problem, she 
found, is the effort of many a lady of the house to follow the old slavery 
custom of ordering the servant about as one below the level of rights and 
feelings — a custom that employers of men found long ago they could not in- 
dulge in if they were to keep any capable workers at all. She says that hav- 
ing the servant live, like other workers, away from the home served, and re- 
moval of the social stigma, will attract into house work capable girls from 
the over-crowded ranks of factory and office workers, but that the change 
will be slow, as class prejudice downward is deep rooted. As recommended 
above in the text, she says "Let the educated class show that they hold there 
is nothing degrading in domestic service, that success in it is honorable, and 
the social ban will gradually disappear." {E'very body's Magazine, June 
1903.) 

The Industrial Commission thought the social stigma counts for more 
than all other objections combined — that the basic trouble is the hiring of a 
servant's person (not simply her labor) for all the time, to do anything 
ordered, as a slave or body servant of a superior, not as an employee on 
the business basis of a contract between equals. In 245 Massachusetts 
homes in 1898 the servant's daily time on call averaged 12% hours, and 
her time on duty ioH> hours. Ladies are such poor employers that many do 
not even pay. The New York Legal Aid Society had in one year claims 
from fully 2000 servants, three-fourths of them collectible and the pay in 
half the cases being deliberately withheld. This shows the reason there 
was for a demand by a servants' union from employers of certificates of 
character. The opinion of perhaps a majority of ladies may be that of one 
who replied to the Commission, "I believe if you have a girl you want her 
when you want her, no matter what time," Overwork is demanded in 
large families, while generally ladies watch the servant too closely, not 
permitting her to dress as she pleases and have companions. That hours 
and work can be limited is proved bv the complete satisfaction with Chinese 
men servants in California, who for $25 to $40 a month do well what they 
contract to do, but will do nothing else. (Indus. Com. XIV.) 



Wage Earning by Women. 497 

the sake of the social standing, which is in effect a part of their 
wages. Girls in America work at a similar reduction, and for 
the same purpose, when they accept from a store a sum no 
larger than they could get in a family with board and room 
included. In England the pay of various positions in school 
teaching and office work is lowered by the effort of many girls 
to get them, for the sake of their gentility.^ 

^Ideal Social Conditions. There are many farming communities in the 
United States where some of the most popular young ladies, having little 
work at home, their fathers being local mechanics with but little land, work 
for wages during busy seasons in the households of the large farms in the 
neighborhood, without a thought in anybody's mind that they are thereby 
lowered socially. In these communities servants have never been a menial 
class when worthy and intelligent. Everywhere the social stigma upon 
household work is often avoided by a girl who helps in a family as a rela- 
tive or as a near friend. Dr. C. B. Spahr, in his book of 1899, "America's 
Working People," tells of ideal conditions of society in rural Vermont, 
where lady school teachers do household work for a part of the year on a 
social equality with the family; of a cultured family in rural New York 
that treats the servant as a friend ; and of farmers' daughters in Minnesota, 
whose leadership as students and teachers in the state normal school is 
equalled by their mastery at home of dairying and housekeeping. He found 
social conditions in the villages much the same as on the farms, and signifi- 
cantly says that rural America is still democratic, as from the beginning, 
the stronghold of freedom, w^hile our cities are like Europe in wealth and 
poverty and caste. 

Schools of Domestic Service. Newspapers have mentioned a plan of 
Bishop Satterlee (Episcopal) to establish a free school in Washington for 
the training of poor girls for domestic service, and a similar plan of Rev. 
C. M. Sheldon of Topeka, the author and reformer. Such a school might 
be useful, both to the girls and to the ladies who employed them. But those 
of the girls who became capable of doing work of a higher social grade 
would probably not remain in servile domestic work. It seems that the 
instruction of this kind now being given by home mission schools to colored 
girls in the South should result in great benefit, both to them and to society. 
They do not have access to the many higher occupations of white girls, and 
might fare much better than at present if fitted to supply the steady demand 
for servants in the North. For several years the Woman's Industrial Union 
of Boston has carried on a school of housekeeping, with a course of 32 
weeks for servants, paid for with work during this time, the diploma giving 
a good position through the Domestic Reform League. The Boston Young 
Women's Christian Association has a course for servants, generally over- 
crowded. Such a school is carried on in Chicago by women's clubs, and such 
schools have been established in several cities by the National Household 
32 



49^ Getting a Living. 

Economic Association. In New York state women's clubs have been seek- 
ing to secure in public schools housekeeping classes like those of Springfield, 
Mass. (page 317). Domestic science classes in technical schools are attend- 
ed by few who will be servants ; they number not over 50 of 450 in such 
classes at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, The instruction in ventilation, in nu- 
tritious value of foods, etc., now given increasingly in public and other 
schools, will reveal the importance of housekeeping, which now leads all 
other occupations in waste of labor and capital. When house service is 
made attractive, by the reforms here indicated, capable girls will enter it, 
and training schools for them will arise. (Indus. Com. XIV.) In Glas- 
gow a ladies' society, for several years, has had some success in reforming 
domestic service and inducing girls to enter it. Its increasing unpopularity 
in Britain comes from growth of democracy, and is a healthy sign of 
struggle for escape from social chains, which are not to be endured in this 
age for the sake of a good home. (See excellent article in Nineteenth 
Century, June, 1903.) 

Ought Servile Work to be Abolished? Doubtless the social standing 
of the rural girls mentioned above is fixed by the standing of the home 
family near by. Miss Jane Addams, in her "Democracy and Social Ethics," 
shows that if the servant (like a factory worker) roomed at home, or in a 
working girls' club (some large flats now have a section for the servants 
of all the families), many objections to house service would be removed — 
those relating to time off duty, to a place to receive company, to isolation 
from associates, and to continual consciousness of inferiority to the family 
served. There would also be less danger of loss of virtue. But the social 
stigma would still need to be removed as recommended in the preceding 
pages. Miss Addams's idea is that by employment of professional house 
cleaners, and by purchase of baked and canned goods, or of hot meals de- 
livered (a new business in London), house work should be further reduced 
toward a minimum, as involving somewhat the servility of body service, 
which cannot well be tolerated in a democracy. 

Though Waiting on One's Self is Beneficial to character and pro- 
motes equality, yet house work seems too important in family life to be 
greatly curtailed by any possible system of co-operative housekeeping or 
boarding, or to be taken care of by the wife with justice to it or to herself 
where the house, the family, or the living, is large. As the character of a 
family depends most of all, perhaps, upon the condition of the home, it 
would seem that for nothing else could income be spent with better results 
than for the desirable forms and grades of home service. No sufficient 
reason appears why house service cannot be bought — like laundering, barber- 
ing, and dressmaking — without trouble as to servile relations. It is the 
servility that ought to be abolished, not the service itself. A large house- 
hold can have division of labor and expert service, and a small household 
can have all this that is desirable, since rearing a family must chiefly remain 
an individual task. But as the present growth of wealth is accompanied by 



Wage Earning by Women. 499 

the old time love of luxury, it may be that nothing but the spread of 
democratic unionism among footmen and waiting maids will save American 
society from a dangerous measure of those penalties which fell so heavily 
upon Rome, and upon France before the Revolution. 

Prof. Lucy M. Salmon of Vassar College, in her book "Domestic Service," 
second edition 1901, says the problem is less to improve the relation with 
servants than to decrease it — not to find more girls but to have less work; 
that household work must be changed from the old servile status as all 
other work has been. The change is to come in having the girl live away 
from the home served, thus avoiding restrictions, directing herself, and 
working regular hours; in having food prepared as far as practicable 
before it comes to the home ; and in hiring experts to do cleaning as they 
are now hired to do painting. After these changes household work will 
attract girls of higher efficiency. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE PUBLIC'S PART IN UPLIFTING WAGE EARNERS 

Patronizing Fair Employers. The kindly interest of the 
general public in the working classes can be made to produce 
decided effects for the better by directing it to more definite 
ends. The people do not yet know the influence they can exert 
in this respect, though increasing attention is being given to the 
matter. Kindly feeling that does not affect one's conduct is 
worth but little. Perhaps most of the sympathy for the poor is 
of this sort — existing only in the mind. It is in the distribution 
of patronage (buying of goods) that any person can make his 
or her influence felt toward establishing right conditions for 
wage workers. A person with an active and intelligent con- 
science feels that all his resources must be used to the utmost 
advantage in promoting the welfare of his fellow men. In the 
act of spending money, though everything bought is kept for 
orVs self, there is a strong influence that many a buyer over- 
looks. When a considerable proportion of the people make a 
practice of buying only from merchants who provide plenty of 
seats for their sales girls, keep their stores properly heated and 
aired, pay their help all they ought to pay, and in every way 
treat them rightly, there will be few merchants who do other- 
wise. In a store well managed, such a policy pays in securing 
efficient work, apart from this effect of drawing patronage.^ 

^The National Consumers' League of New York City, having now 53 
societies in 18 states, recommends as worthy of public patronage those manu- 
facturers whose goods are found by investigation to be made under rig'ht 
conditions of labor, and those merchants (46 in New York) who provide 
such conditions for their help. It has a label that is placed on ladies' and 
children's white goods made in factories recommended (43 in ii states). 
The Michigan branch of the league sent out in December, 1900, a circular re- 
questing preachers to ask their congregations to do their shopping some time 
before Christmas, and thus to avoid adding to the exhausting work of clerks 
in the busy season. There is a similar consumers' league in England. In 

(500) 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 501 

Need Not Involve Boycotting. The placing of one's pat- 
ronage where it will help to establish right conditions of labor 
need have none of the resentful nature of the usual boycott. 
JManufacturers and dealers deemed unworthy need not be men- 
tioned or thought of. The only thing to consider is that all 
one's trade and help are due to those who not only give best 
values to the buyer, but at the same time do their full duty 
toward their work people, which is also their duty toward 
society. This is rewarding those who do right. The usual 
boycott, on the contrary, being a direct effort to keep customers 
away, is fighting those who do wrong, or who do what is 
against us. When persons not directly concerned are drawn 
into it, the greater wrong, in addition to breaking the law (page 
218), may be committed by the boycotters themselves. 

But the Buyer's First Duty is Toward Himself. He ought 
first, as a rule, to fulfill this duty by trading with dealers who 
will give him for his money at least as much (sometimes more) 
value and satisfaction as he can obtain from any others. He 
himself should try to be the most deserving man he knows. He 
(or his life work) is the most deserving, whatever his wealth, 
and whatever the poverty of those he deals with, when all he 
gets or saves comes honestly, and is devoted to those uses which 
will result in most good to society.^ Even if he is not J^us 

the growing desire of the public to benefit the working class, there seems to 
be considerable promise in this plan among buyers to utilize their influence 
over sellers. 

It is allowable to secure real bargains temporarily offered anywhere, in 
fire sales, or in closing out sales. Yet an active conscience will not permit 
one to take advantage of merchants by making a practice of buying in 
strange stores the few articles marked down as leaders to draw in new 
customers, unless other goods at regular prices are bought at the same time. 
^It would be wrong (a waste of the resources making for good in society) 
for a citizen to conscientiously list his personal property for tax assessment 
at sums much nearer to full value than was customary. Usually the assessor 
does not desire such valuation. The truth sworn to means truth to the degree 
customary and understood. But it would be better to err toward valuation 
too high than too low. 

Paying More for an Article than it Would Cost Elsewhere is making 
the dealer a gift of the excess paid. Unless the buyer is under special 
obligation, he is thus helping the less fit to survive, perhaps to be carried 
along on these excess payments as a tax or dead weight on those who con- 
tinue to trade with him, whether or not they know he is overcharging. In 



502 Getting a Living. 

conscientious, the buying of values not the best for the price is 
a questionable practice. Among the various dealers who may 
be about equal in respect to values offered, the conscientious 
buyer can first select those who treat their help properly; and 
then from these select the one whose money and influence are 
devoted in largest proportion to benefiting his fellow men — 
socially, morally, and religiously. That would be perhaps the 
perfect way of bestowing one's patronage. It is patronage, 
though generally deserved, that makes most men what they are 
financially, and sometimes socially. With it a good man's 
power for good may be greatly increased. Often a person must 
first deal with those who have dealt with him, or to whom he is 
under obligation of some kind. After he is square with the 
world in this respect, he can then bestow his custom as set forth 
above. Only the more conscientious will use their influence so 
carefully. But the results of this method of benefiting human- 
ity are certain. Any one can follow it to some extent. 

a perfect condition of industry, every dollar of capital, and every stroke of 
labor, would be so employed as to effect the most in producing useful things, 
to be divided among the people as each might select and offer value in ex- 
change. This means the laborers we have, whom this country must feed 
anyhow, not more immigrants, whom other countries must feed until they 
come here. Any merchant whose presence in business gives no part of the 
community lower prices or better service (from all the local merchants 
together), even though he sell as cheaply as any other, is wasting, so far as 
the public is concerned, the usefulness of the capital and labor employed. 
If he gets a large income in profit, and pays good wages, the case is worse, 
since for all this taken from the community it is no better served than it 
would be without this store. However, a successful store does help usually 
to keep prices lower in the town, and to make supply service better ; yet 
upon useless stores capital and labor are wasted which, If effectively applied 
where needed, would materially increase the useful things we enjoy. 

The Fraternal Idea, now very popular, of patronizing brethren in the 
church or lodge, is praiseworthy when they give as good values as can be ob- 
tained from others. Perhaps it is allowable, for the moral effect of brotherli- 
ness, to pay them a little extra in price for a short time, that they may have 
a chance to show what they can do. Then, if their values and service are 
still lacking, allowing them to fail would benefit all concerned. The dealer 
himself could hardly desire to live as a parasite on the community. The 
man who follows these principles wants others to do the same toward him. 
He wants to deserve all he gets. Most of the capable business men now 
generally observe the golden rule, finding that as it pays to do so, its level 
of morality is in business not difficult to attain. 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners, 503 

The Union Label has been largely used during the last fif- 
teen years in America (but has not yet been introduced in other 
countries) on cigars and hats, and to some extent on jobs of 
printing, loaves of bread, articles of clothing, and various other 
things. The object of its use is to secure patronage for union 
shops, and thus to increase employment for union men, by 
inducing trade unionists and their sympathizers to ask dealers 
for goods bearing the union label, and as far as practicable to 
buy no others. A union-made brand of goods a dealer may be 
induced to keep in stock through mention of the label by only a 
few customers. The large success attained in inducing m.anu- 
facturers of hats and cigars to recognize the union in their 
shops, in order to use the label on their goods, is partly due to 
the fact that these two commodities are bought by men only, 
and in large proportion by workingmen. In advertising over- 
alls the garment makers' union label is naturally made promi- 
nent ; also the printers' label on all kinds of printed matter ad- 
dressed to voters by parties or candidates.^ During 1901-3 the 
urging of buyers to demand goods bearing a union label has 
been pushed vigorously throughout the country, by advertise- 
ments in papers and on billboards, by small papers published for 
the purpose, and by label leagues (78 in 1903) of local unions 
united for agitation, the wives of unionists being interested, and 
in some cases lady organizers being employed to travel and 

^Meeting Places for Unions in Saloons. In saloons patronized by 
working men the proprietor's indorsement of unionism is often evident, from 
the pictures and papers he displays. In England, from the beginning of 
unionism, a meeting room for unions has been furnished free in many public 
houses, with expectation of course that unionists would return the favor at the 
bar, which return was an important part of the program until union business 
became too large to be entrusted to men with such accompaniments. This 
custom of meeting at public houses, necessary in England while unionists 
were yet poor and ignorant, has long been decreasing there, and has been 
less common in America, though it is still followed by many unions in large 
cities. In both countries large unions in cities have a room or office open 
continually, and many others rent a hall for use at meeting times. In about 
a dozen British cities, In which unions are a power in local politics, a room 
for their meetings is given free in the city hall. The unionism of Mel- 
bourne, in Australia, is noted for its ownership of a large and costly labor 
temple. In the small city of Everett, Washington, a labor temple costing 
$4,000 was completed in 1902. Such buildings are now projected at a few 
other places in America, including Boston and Indianapolis, and Toronto. 



504 Getting a Living. 

establish such leagues. In hundreds of towns the local organ- 
izer's urging of the boycott of those on the Federation's pub- 
lished list of unfair employers is accompanied by agitation for 
union labels. At a few places the trades council, nominally at 
least, imposes a fine on any union man who buys goods without 
the label. The cigar makers' union leads in label agitation, on 
which it spends about $30,000 a year. In asking patronage for 
union goods it has now special reasons, in the refusal of the 
cigar trust to employ unionists, and — more important still — in 
the trust's present movement of buying out or driving out many 
retailers who do not comply with its wishes. Perhaps one rea- 
son why many of the most expensive cigars do not bear the 
union label is that it might repel, rather than attract, the wealthy 
men by whom such cigars are smoked. 

Where Value is at Least Equal in the article bearing the 
label, to that in other brands offered at the same price, prefer- 
ence in buying the union article is sound, and may tend toward 
good results in society, as will patronizing merchants that treat 
their help well. But what of paying for the label-bearing goods 
a price somewhat higher ? Use of the union label is confined to 
strictly union shops, complying with all the union conditions, 
except where weakness of its position induces the union to grant 
its label to shops unionized only in part. Some of the latter 
may be inferior concerns, and occasionally by such the label has 
been counterfeited, or bought of an unfaithful official of the 
union. Moreover, union requirements relate to wages and 
hours, not to shop ventilation or cleanliness, which are matters 
for the state factory inspector or local health officers. Hence, 
the label shows only that an article was probably made under 
clean and healthful conditions, since shops paying union wages 
(excepting some small ones in towns closely unionized) are 
generally of an upper grade, and at least fairly clean and well 
conducted. To this extent, therefore, in paying an extra price 
for cigars and clothing bearing the label there would be a con- 
sideration, in greater security against filth and disease, these 
commodities being largely produced in crowded sweat-shops. 
Of quality justifying a higher price, the union label, though not 
permitted on cigars below a certain grade of cheapness, cannot 
as a rule be made a guarantee ; because work at full pay on 
cheap goods, of poor materials, may sometimes be as desirable 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 505 

for unionists as any other work. Besides, quality is not always 
lacking in goods made by non-unionists. In most of the union- 
ized occupations some of the leading concerns, making goods of 
the best grades, employ a force partly or wholly non-union, and 
in some cases under excellent conditions of labor.^ 

Paying a Higher Price to Help Unionism is involved so far 
as the appeal of a union label, not to buy other goods at lower 
price, does not rest on their poorer quality or on greater risk of 
uncleanliness. Where desirableness is equal, the excess of 
price paid is a clear and direct gift toward the cause. That 
would be no objection with a person willing to contribute ; but 
could such action be wise, as resulting in benefit to society ? It 
seems not. The unionist outcry against the cheap labor of 
Chinese has had a good effect in the law that keeps them from 
crowding our country. Restriction of other immigration is 
needed almost as much. The unionist outcry against the cheap 
labor of children has a good effect in laws for keeping children 
out of factories and in school. The result is that they reach 
full growth, and in life do the largest aggregate of work and 
secure the largest amount of enjoyment. But any excess in 
union wages that comes, not from naturally higher product 
value of union, labor, but from patronage held through favor 
alone, involves outright giving of money to keep well paid men 
at a kind of work that could be done as efficiently at less pay by 

^The Union Lalsel as a Guarantee of Quality. "So far as union condi- 
tions — wages, hours, sanitation, etc. — stand for higher excellence (as in 
many cases they do), it may be claimed that the label also represents a better 
quality of work. Further than this very indefinite claim, the label cannot 
be said to stand for excellence of workmanship or product." (J. G. Brooks, 
Labor Bulletin No. 15, March, 1898.) While by giving up unsound ideas 
and bad practices, and by proving merit, unionism, where employers are 
similarly reasonable, can be made for the employer a guarantee of the work- 
er's competence (page 297), it does not seem that it can ever be made for 
the consumer a guarantee of the product's quality. Whatever the employee's 
skill, he cannot make even the workmanship good when the article must be 
made quickly to sell at a low price, and besides he has nothing to do with 
the quality of material used. Where deception is not attempted, the manu- 
facture of those middle quality goods used in largest quantity is perhaps the 
most useful manufacture of all. And it is probably well that unionism 
cannot be made a guarantee of quality, since, to be capable, buyers must 
exercise judgment, and employers must have more to do than simply to hire 
unionists. (See page 515.) 



5o6 Getting a Living. 

lower grade people, and to keep these well paid men out of some 
more difficult work in which to the full value of high pay they 
could serve society. Perhaps it is always intended that where 
goods bearing the union label are higher in price the difference 
shall be balanced by greater intrinsic desirableness. Otherwise 
the standard of living of the union workers would be kept up 
on a fictitious basis, and by taking the employment and lowering 
the standard of other workers far more in need of considerate 
or charitable treatment from the public.^ The solid foundation 

^Buying Goods at Home. Sometimes, when man}^ unions are being 
started in a small city, they gain favor from employers, especially mer- 
chants, by urging members not to buy goods out of town. The matter of not 
buying at home will do to complain about in a general wa}-, but does not 
bear examination. Perhaps half the retail trade of such a city may come 
from country people on whom stores in the small villages may have first 
claim. These village merchants have as good a right as those in the city to 
claim home patronage, and perhaps better, in having greater need of aid. 
Moreover, goods made in the city are sold largely in other cities making 
goods of the same kind, and bm'ing in the nearest metropolis by excursion- 
ists from the smaller city raav be balanced with buying in the latter by 
excursionists from villages. Not many people leave home dealers theyknow^ 
and with whom mistakes in buying can easily be corrected, to buy elsewhere, 
unless they really gain thereby. A dealer who offers §olid values has a 
surer way of getting trade than by appealing to people's local spirit, or by 
censuring them for doing what they, the parties at risk, consider best. 

The Principle of Protection Again.— When an editor writes that if 
the people of the city would only confine their buying to home products the 
city's business and population would soon be increased by a quarter, he for- 
gets not only that every dollar not balanced with satisfaction to the buyer 
would be a free gift, but also that r^ew dealers and rrianufacturers would 
come perhaps faster than the growth of business, and make the chances of 
the old dealers worse than before. Many a merchant that does well while 
the city is small is driven out when its growth brings higher grade concerns 
wnth which he is unable to compete. Preferring home goods is sound 
when values are at least equal, and that equality buyers should generally 
make effort to perceive and reward; but when the home value falls short 
the buyer bestows a gift which, by weakening the home producer's effort to 
get trade by deserving it, makes his customers at other places fewer than 
before. The protective principle is unsound enough when applied to the 
nation, but it is worse when applied to the city. Excepting the small amount 
of need that can be removed only by charity, and excepting a little present 
making among friends, nature is determined that no giving, tipping, or 
private taxing shall go without punishment on somebody. 

Securing New Industries for a City by Offering Bonuses is a sound 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 507 

of unionism is the effect of its high wages to raise efficiency still 
higher, giving the employer and the public better values than 
could be obtained from non-union men at lower wages. 
Relief of the Sweated Trades by boycott of non-union goods^ 

practice for those persons having land to be thus raised in value, and for 
any business men who think the resulting growth would benefit them more 
with new customers than it would harm them with new competitors. As 
in other kinds of outlay with hope of gain, men thus interested may do well 
to secure a new factory for the town by donating a site, by erecting a build- 
ing for the new concern to rent, by granting it loans or buying its shares — 
provided that they use iheir oivn money. There was good reason also for 
investment of public money in railroad shares by many cities and counties 
thirty years ago; for, despite the losses and corruption, railroads were then 
badly needed, and were not built unaided, as at present, to any place having 
enough business to deserve a road. But raising a bonus to secure a new fac- 
tory, by taxation or by general subscription, is thoroughly unsound. 

Bonus Giving and Unfair Competition in Labor. Though use of 
public money in bonuses would now generally be held unconstitutional if 
contested, there are yet cases in which city money from bonds is given to a 
concern on the condition of its employing a certain number of men, and 
cases in which use of a city building is given free or at low rent. Between 
1885 and 1893 there were many cases in which a city raised tens of thousands 
of dollars on bonds, and gave the amount to a manufacturer for practically 
no consideration except to induce him to move in, or not to move out. Of 
course an industry that cannot get capital on its prospects of profit has no 
right to exist (page 99). Bidding by a city for a new industry, since it 
adds nothing to the country's total market for products, can only take the 
industry from another town, and pauperize it with gifts, when if it had a 
right to exist it would be located somewhere anyhow. In this matter, which 
is the same in principle as v.age cutting by scabs to get the jobs of other 
men, cities need at least tacitly to unionize against offering more for new 
industries than general good government — than the best in water supply, 
fire protection, city docks, etc. Where all taxes are justly levied and wisely 
spent there will be no need of tax exemption for factories. Such exemption 
is generally a scab offer against other towns. Business-like government is 
"enterprise" that is good for old and new industries alike. To continue the 
burden of bonus giving might make the inducement for moving in this year 
no greater than the inducement for moving out next year. 

^What is Meant by Sweating? Any wage worker is sweated when by 
reason of hurried speed, many hours, low pay, or unhealthy work rooms 
(usually by all these conditions together), his labor taxes his strength beyond 
a reasonable proportion to the living obtained. A sweat-shop is a crowded 
room occupied by sweated people at work — usually in the poorer quarter of 
a- large city. The sweating system is the manufacture of various kinds of 
ready-made clothing, of cigars or other things, by an entire family in their 



5o8 Getting a Living. 

or at least by refusal to buy goods whose sweat-shop origin is 
indicated by cheapness or otherwise — is urged by consumers* 
leagues, and by the many preachers, reformers, and charity 
workers who teach that a conscientious person must often re- 
frain from buying at the lowest price. This seems to be another 
case of kindness that is worse than wasted.^ If the excess a 
buyer paid (above the price an article could be bought for in 
open market from competent sellers) went to the sweated work- 
er himself, it would be only a charity dole (page 144), and 
would settle him deeper in the miserable work poorly demanded, 
causing him to relax effort to find other work that yielded a 
living wage. But of course the excess paid would not reach 
the sweated, being retained by the dealer receiving it. It would 
still be a dole if given for a well paid union worker's product in 
which excess of price was not equalled by excess of value. Re- 
fusal to buy tenement-made goods could not be carried far 
enough to starve out their production, which besides would not 

miserable tenement home, or by men and women In a sweat-shop, the work 
being done in each case for a sweater or subcontractor, at piece or task rates 
made Incredibly low by the large number and bitter need of the people seek- 
ing to be employed. The piece rate to the subcontractor, paid by the large 
clothing house giving out to him the cloth to be made up. Is also kept very 
low by the price cutting of the many subcontractors in the business, which 
requires little or no capital and may be entered easily. Generally a sweated 
worker and his family are partially starved, and are too weak, poor, or 
ignorant to escape from their wretched condition. In America they are 
always thought of as living in large cities, chiefly in New York. In Eng- 
land the sweated trades Include also many self-employed makers of nails, 
chains, and furniture, on a small scale by hand, under constant necessity of 
selling their product quickly to avoid suffering. The few employees of these 
garret masters are sweated still worse than themselves and families. 

^Self-Sacrifice and Merit. The Impulsive, unthought conclusion, that 
anything involving self-sacrifice is good, is evidently present here, as it Is in 
charitable giving for the health of one's own soul, however unworthy the 
recipient. It Is forgotten that self-sacrifice has always been abused In 
asceticism — by Jewish Pharisees, by Christian monks, and by fanatics of 
various heathen religions. It is abused in another way by parents who sac- 
rifice themselves In harmfully Indulging their children. The essence of the 
burden of labor — namely, finding by "the Intolerable toil of thought" the 
wise course, and then pursuing energetically — Is not to be escaped even In 
the doing of good. Patiently obeying this law of God Is better, as well as 
more difficult, than many of the more obvious but less real forms of self- 
sacrifice. 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 509 

be the most humane way of helping the sweated. Under gen- 
eral ignorance of the sweating system, and under the doubtful 
good of such a boycott at best, too small a proportion of buyers 
would incur the loss of not taking the best bargains offered. 
Perhaps most of the buyers of cheap underwear and other 
sweat-shop goods are poor themselves, and unable justly to 
contribute. Refraining by the few from taking bargains would 
have little effect ; and, at the most, low price is not a reliable 
mark of sweating, since in many cases sweated workers make 
men's suits and ladies' cloaks that are sold at high prices to the 
rich. Moreover, a crusade against sweat-shop clothing is likely 
to spring far less from a desire to keep diseases from buyers 
(or even to help the sweated) than from a desire to get the em- 
ployment for other and less deserving workers.^ Whatever 
truth there may be in the reported danger to consumers from 
disease in sweat-shops (above the danger from diseased work- 
ers in factories) is not for competitors to cruelly magnify, but 
for the health and factory authorities to humanely rectify. 

The Craze for Cheapness is Not the Cause of Sweating, as 
is claimed by many persons of various socialistic ideas. To get 
all that can honorably be obtained in exchange, from one com- 
petent to bargain, is as much the buyer's duty with his money 
as it is the worker's duty with his labor. In each case the duty 
is no more toward one's self than toward society, in order that 
business may not be shifted from the safe and sensible basis of 
value for value, over to the unhealthy basis of dependence with 
some and of the consequent advantage taking with others. 
Since in not buying cheapest nothing effective can be done to 
shield the sweated from imposition, such appeals to buyers 
are misdirected, causing a waste of their interest and effort, as 
well as giving the sweated false hopes of rescue. Moreover, 
as in exposure to a prairie fire it is wrong to depend on help 
from God until the settler has plowed around his house and 
done all else in his power, so in exposure to the desire of others 
to get the most for their money or labor — a force as natural and 

^It was with a discernment the good citizen must admire that the New 
York court set aside, about ten years ago, a law forbidding the manufacture 
in tenements of cigars or other articles to be taken in the mouth. A similar 
law of Montana, transparent as a blow at the Chinese, imposed a license tax 
on laundries not using steam. It was set aside in 1896. 



5IO Getting a Living. 

beneficent as the force of fire — it is wrong to appeal to and 
cheapen the noble trait of sympathetic helpfulness until society 
and the sweated themselves have exhausted the practical means 
of relief. It is getting into a condition of helpless exposure to 
the evil effects of close bargaining that is the cause of sweating. 
The natural and ever present desire (among manufacturers, 
contractors, and consumers) to obtain all one can is no more 
the cause of sweating than the ocean is the cause of the loss of 
a ship that was taken out of port when unseaworthy. But on 
the contrary, getting into a condition of helpless exposure is 
itself largely the cause of the sweater's rapacity. The presence 
of so much easy prey, in the form of unprotected people incom- 
petent to bargain, would tempt many business men anywhere 
to follow the sweater's example in coining money from the 
blood of the poor. And the people's craze for cheapness is 
developed by purveyors of bargains. Yet after all, this craze 
amounts to very little. Buyers who look beneath the surface 
know that there are few cases in which cheapness is not bal- 
anced by defect of some kind. ' 

The Remedy is to Get the Sweated Out of Their Helpless 
Condition. For their deliverance all the proper means should 
be used. It would be well for the wholesale clothing manu- 
facturer conscientiously to refuse to give out work to con- 
tractors (unless he set the conditions) and to give it out him- 
self to the poor workers, so far as he could thus add, without 
loss or undue risk, a new department to his business, and so far 
as his extra expense in raising wages and reducing hours was 
balanced by extra value in better work (page 145). It would 
be well also to place public and other contracts with fair em- 
ployers, not by a fair wage clause easily abused, but with speci- 
fications as to quality that would raise the work above the 
sweater's grade and still secure full market value for the money 
spent. And preference by consumers for goods bearing the 
label of the union, or of the consumers' league, when the buyer 
cannot get better value otherwise, is also a sound method of 
increasing that portion of industry which affords right condi- 
tions to the workers, and of reducing the remaining portion, 
while at the same time attracting employers away from the lat- 
ter with proof that right conditions pay. But, as previously 
implied, the reverse is the effect when in either of these cases 



Tlic Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 511 

the buyer fails to get the best market value for himself. Be- 
sides wasting the money of the forces of good, refusal to buy 
articles of best value, because of their not bearing the union 
label, would not only bring a bad element of charity into the 
support of the unionists concerned, but would make worse the 
condition of the sweated, and obstruct their escape. Such re- 
fusal would not extend far enough to do good. In but few 
places is unionism strong enough to accomplish much toward 
inducing dealers not to handle those goods highest in value for 
the price. By the union label the great farming class, as a rule, 
are not attracted but are repelled, deeming its use a method of 
obtaining a price higher than the quality justifies. Also, on 
goods designed for the well-to-do in general, such as books and 
magazines, the union label is not used. Such people are re- 
minded by the label of unionism's unsound ideas and policies 
of coercion. The risk of arousing unfavorable feeling among 
buyers is a safeguard against the temptation for unionists to 
collect, by means of the label, an assessment or charity contri- 
bution, while their occasionally proposed universal boycott of 
non-union goods, like the socialistic universal strike (page 233), 
would unite an invincible body against them. But refusal to 
buy goods not bearing the label would extend far enough to do 
harm. It would not drive out the sweated, but would lessen 
the means to lead them out. By unnaturally reducing demand 
for their labor it would reduce their opportunity for self-help, 
by individually going from one employer to another to get better 
pay, and by some concert in demand among the many unfitted to 
earn the full union conditions. For the present a large section 
of the sweated people are too ignorant, too much scattered 
in tenements, and too near starvation, to combine efifectively in 
unions or to refuse otherwise to work for the low wages offered. 
It is Mainly by Law that They Must be Rescued from their 
pitiable condition.^ First, greatly increased restriction of im- 

^Who is Responsible for the Suffering and the Shame? Those who 
say it is wrong to buy goods at the lowest prices — that "every consumer, by 
each act of purchase, is exerting a direct power of life or death over a class 
of producers" (Hobson) — say also that persons thus buying, and that em- 
ployers paying low wages to the sweated, are responsible for the turning by 
girls from poorly paid work to a better support with the wages of sin. For 
reasons given above, and on page 144, paying wages or prices above market 



512 Getting a Living... 

migration would prevent the cit}^ slums from being more closely 
packed every year with tens of thousands of new-comers, to 
neutralize the effort of unions, and drag wages still lower in the 

rates would make the conditions worse; while for a worker to depend on 
buyers to charitably deliver him from low pay and the wrong business is 
similarly blighting as to depend on them for supper and lodging. Nature 
has decreed that such dependence shall bring forth death — death at first to 
the will and eventually to the body, and then to the society that encourages 
it. Fortunately, not enough people will be unsoundly thoughtful in their 
buying to materially increase the pauperizing influences. But for the poor 
worker's condition there is responsibility on all in every class who fail to do 
their part toward securing needed laws, and toward helping forward the 
various sound movements for rescuing the sweated. The latter would be 
more responsible themselves, in not using better judgment, if they were not 
so disheartened. Their almost childish helplessness was exemplified by a 
woman whose struggles, in earning 35c. and 50c. a week by toiling early and 
late at piece rates on different kinds of garment making, were narrated in 
The Outlook of Nov. 22, 1902. As people thus discouraged are unable to 
get a decent living, by going to where they are wanted, it is a public duty 
to seek them out as incompetents, and to put them on a plane of self-support. 
Between $3 and $3.50 per week of very long days was found by official 
Investigation In 1902 to be about the average earnings of women in New 
York city engaged In finishing clothing at home, though the average in the 
white goods trade was about $6. 

The Cost to Society. "What profit cannot unload upon price, or price 
snatch away from profit, Is by both dumped upon society and forms the 
social price," says Mr. Ethelbert Stewart in The Outlook, May 31, 1903. 
But the cost that reaches society in the idleness and blight of "droves of 
practically black-listed persons charged with the new crime of having gray 
hairs" Is due almost wholly (i) to trade unionism's ban upon the justifiable 
non-unionism of acceptance of less than the full rate by those unable to earn 
it, and (2) to the general condemnation of hiring anywhere workers that are 
cheap per day, the assumption being that unfair advantage Is taken of them. 
If employers are so ready, as Is claimed, to hire inexperienced children and 
women, they would be more ready, If permitted to pay wages just to them- 
selves, to give elderly men work at a pace they could stand (pages 314, 381). 
Also, the old men working for the city In parks, of whom only three per cent 
could earn full pay elsewhere, would not be pauperized, nor Induced to drop 
early out of private Industry, If the unionism and socialism in public opinion 
did not require for them high wages that are half charity — something not 
to be hidden ; while the public money thus worse than wasted would, if 
used to buy labor at Its market value, give work to many of the unemployed, 
and benefit the city's poor with a better cleaning of the slums. There will 
never be a way to place a pauper tax on the employer by making him pay 
more for labor than he can sell Its product for; nor, despite society's gain in 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 513 

sweated trades. It was immigration of Southern and Eastern 
Europeans, desperately poor and ignorant, and fitted only for 
the easy work of the sweated trades, that created the sweating 
evil at first, between 1880 and 1890, both in London and in New 
York, and that has since added to it/ Second, enlargement of 
public school capacity in the great cities, and strict enforcement 
of compulsory education laws, would save the little children 
that are being worked to death in hundreds of slum homes, es- 
pecially if their home work were subjected by law, as in Eng- 
land, to inspection as to hours. The parent's right of control 
over the child, to the extent of abuse, has never been recognized 
by civilized states in modern times. Habitually carrying heavy 
bundles up five flights of steps, for parents that act kindly, may 
be worse abuse of a frail child than frequent whippings by 
parents that act brutally. In the long run, not only would no 
life be wasted, but less charity would be required, to allow 
children to grow up to self-support in school, supplementing 
with poor relief what they might earn after school hours, than 
by permitting them to be made physical wrecks in work for 
parents. Third, enforcement of laws regulating work in fac- 
tories will keep young children out of them, and provide for the 

restricting child labor and factory hours, will there ever be, without a social 
cost that will be staggering, any way of relieving those not utterly helpless 
from the necessitj^ of doing their own bargaining and earning all they get. 
Most of the social cost that is now blighting large portions of society, as just 
indicated, could be gotten rid of simply by open adoption of the natural and 
right policy of contracting with the seller who offers most for the money, 
and of teaching the workers that they must do likewise to avoid being 
ruined, and society with them, by being charitably cared for. 

^The Padrone System. The exposure to loss of poor foreigners, igno- 
rant of our language and customs, is exemplified by the extortion of the 
Italian padrone, to whom goes most of the wages of many a fellow country- 
man he brings to America, His charges are made for finding jobs, for 
boarding, for lending money, etc. Sometimes, where the worker remains 
ignorant, his wages continue to be paid to the padrone for months and years, 
the worker being to some extent his slave. From these padrones railway 
contractors hire Italians in large gangs. Other immigrants, it seems, are 
not thus imposed on by shrewd countrymen here, ignorance and corruption 
not being so common in the home land as with Italians. Yet the sweater, 
by speaking several languages, finds victims among new comers. Their 
working in small groups to themselves prevents them from learning how to 
earn more. 
2>3 



514 Getting a Living, 

health and safety of adults. These laws could be extended, as 
in New York and Massachusetts, to cover every concern em- 
ploying one person not belonging to the family. Work by 
grown people in their own home could not be constitutionally 
prohibited, or limited in hours, but under the city's health ordi- 
nances, and under the state's license law for tenement manufac- 
ture, the owner and occupants of every house can be required to 
Iceep it in sanitary condition. New York makes the owner 
responsible for use of his rooms contrary to the license law. 
The city authorities can open parks and libraries in the poor 
quarters, and maintain in school houses, to be kept always in 
use, free practical lectures for adults and various other instruc- 
tive exercises (an effort very successful in New York,^ and now 
spreading to Boston, Newark, and elsewhere) ; while philan- 
thropists can build model tenements and boarding houses, and 
support the lectures, industrial schools, and other uplifting work 
of the social settlements and betterment societies. Along these 
lines, excepting immigration, which is a national matter, the 
evils of the sweating system in Boston are fast being removed, 
largely by means of diligent work by inspectors, lack of whom 
has almost nullified much of the world's factory and tenement 
legislation. New York, Illinois, and other states have similar 
laws for the sweat-shop evil. These laws, which forbid manu- 
facturing in dwellings except by members of the family, brought 
about in one year in New York city the erection of 59 new fac- 
tory buildings, occupied by 483 shops, on sites previously occu- 
pied by tenements. Of course the laws can make no constitu- 
tional regulation as to time work or piece work, or as to amount 
of pay. For such matters the state can only teach and assist 
into self-help. 

Escape by the Sweated Themselves. Enforcement of these 
laws enables many of the slum children, as they approach 
maturity, to get into work affording better pay; and also, by 
saving the strength of adults, enables these to earn more. As 
the pressure of poverty is somewhat relieved, and as hope is 
awakened, the latter get a better understanding of their condi- 

^In the season of 1901-2 the lectures numbered 3,172, and the total attend- 
ance reached 928,251, consisting mainlv of adults. 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 515 

tion, and learn how to act together in unions.^ The sweated 
learn also, in some cases, to go where their labor sells higher. 
Some knowledge of other places, and of other lines of work, is 

^In the United Garment Workers' Strike of 1901, In New York, about 
a dozen unions joined (for the first time successfully), covering the entire 
clothing trade except women working at home. Previously, beginning in 
1894, the workers in the more important branches of the tailoring trade had 
abolished by strike much of the evil in the sweating system, shortening the 
day for cutters to nine hours in New York and to eight in Chicago, and 
securing fairly good pay and conditions for about two-thirds of all affected 
by the sweating system. To a considerable extent manufacturers were in- 
duced to cease subcontracting, and to open healthful shops of their own. 
{Labor Bulletin No. 4,) Further reform in the same direction is still being 
urged by the unions, with good prospect of success. By strike pressure they 
induce the reputable wholesaler to sign their scale of wages and to become 
responsible for payment. Self-interest then leads him to dispense with the 
irresponsible subcontractor or to make him a mere foreman. Decrease of 
subcontracting, by turning the home workers into factories, decreases the 
number of those who have no chance to learn conditions and imbibe the 
union spirit by association with others, and who are too ignorant and isolated 
to be unionized as they are. 

The label of the federation of separate unions known as the United Gar- 
ment Workers, which has been most effective of all the 52 labels recognized 
by the American Federation except the labels of the cigar makers and) 
brewery workers, is now being sought almost daily by manufactyrers com- 
ing to headquarters and asking to have their shops unionized. Being given 
only to shops complying with state laws and union rules (generally shops 
somewhat large), It has gone far in New York toward abolishing sweat- 
shops and small contractors, (J. R. Commons, Re'v. of Rev., Aug. 1903.) 
Yet the drawing force back of the label, it is to be hoped and believed, Is 
not an effect from It to induce buyers to subsidize unionism by choosing 
values not the best, but is their choice of the labeled article where it is at 
least equal to others, and is especially the earning by unionists of high pay 
better than the less competent earn low pay. 

The Influence of the Union Label In Milwaukee has been learned by 
visiting 205 stores {Am. Jour. Sociology, Sept. 1903). In each line most 
dealers reported no demand or small demand for labeled goods, chiefly the 
former. The label was found on cheaper grades only, and it made these 
higher In price. Some even declared it a badge of cheap goods, and one 
said his labeled overalls were worse than others costing 75c. less per dozen. 
Five-cent cigars bore the label, but not ten-cent cigars from the same maker. 
Some thought much of the choosing of labeled goods was done to avoid a 
union fine, but there was agreement that unionists soon take the best values, 
regardless of labels, and buy freely of the boycotted trust-made tobaccos. 
Concerns making a special tv of labeled goods were few and small, and com- 



5i6 Getting a Living. 

the hope of escape from an industry that is overcrowded or is 
passing away. By irregular work and low pay, due to excep- 
tional slackness of demand, miners in different American coal 
districts have repeatedly been brought near to the point of 
suffering. The main reason for smallness of pay with the 
sweated workers in the tenements, to whom Hood's Song of the 
Shirt is still distressingly applicable, is that they are doing by 
hand a kind of work that can be done cheaply with machinery 
in factories, and that would have passed to factories long ago 
if it had not been for the unlimited supply and incredible cheap- 
ness of slum labor, which, when done in homes, is made still 
cheaper to the employer by his release from the expense of rent 
and heat, and by his freedom to hire more or fewer at any time.^ 
When by combining into unions, and by going into other work, 
the sweated can refuse to accept wages so low, their lines of 
manufacture will gradually pass to factories, in which they can 
find employment under healthful conditions, at living wages, 
and can soon unionize effectually, while producing for the 
people goods better and cheaper than at present. This change 
has been taking place for some time in the clothing industry of 
England, as in Boston and New York (see previous page). In 
many sweated hand trades of England, kept in existence by low 
wages and long work days, there are lamentable suffering and 
waste of labor power. Factories taking away the present busi- 
ness of the hand workers, while affording them new employ- 
ment, would be their surest deliverance. The essence of sweat- 
ing lies in the absence of responsible employers, of factory laws, 
and of unionism (Webb) ; that is, when the poverty of the 
workers, and their inability to move or find better work, leads 
subcontractors to gain by imposing on them instead of by 
proper superintendence. 

Labor's Last Resort. In a circular issued occasionally by 

plained of unionists for leaving them to buy scab-made goods more cheaply^ 
while others mentioned the loss in carrying labeled goods for a few demand- 
ing them. Women practically ignored the label (there are no label leagues 
in Milwaukee), though two grocers reporting a demand for labeled brooms 
had each been asked for them by one woman customer. The investigation 
indicates that unionists and all others are too sensible to discourage the cost 
and price lowering of which progress has so largely consisted. 

^Capitalism does not need, as socialists assert, a reserve army, but it gladly 
uses one if the idle wait around. The same is true of the she town. 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 517 

the British government, and placed before the pubHc in its 
post-offices, giving information of wages and demand for labor 
in the British colonies, mechanics were warned of scarcity of 
employment (May, igoo), but everywhere, the circular said, 
there is a sure living, usually a chance to do well, for men who 
can engage in farming for themselves, and for women who can 
do house work. There is here an important general truth. That 
man's welfare is safe who can go on land and make a living at 
first hand from nature (page 33). Generally this is true even 
when he has no capital, but is only a capable farm hand. That 
woman's support is sure while health remains, whatever mis- 
fortune may come, who can make herself useful by doing in the 
way desired the household work that must always be plentiful. 
These two kinds of work can be depended upon as the last 
resort. To few persons with opinions worth considering would 
earning a good home and a full "living at house work lower 
one's social standing so much as would partial starvation at 
some kind of genteel sewing, especially when in the latter case 
the worker has any part in the appeal not to buy the cheapest. 

No Necessity for Suffering. No person ought to remain, 
without constant effort to escape, in any work that with econ- 
omy does not afford healthful housing, suitable clothing, and 
the food and rest required to keep up strength. This is the 
lowest standard of life compatible with public welfare. After 
a person has earnestly exerted his or her best effort, and has 
failed to get such a living, he or she is then justified in falling 
back upon charity, for assistance toward a plane of self-support. 
In enlightened lands there is no necessity for starvation nowa- 
days, nor even for want. In America there are resources in 
land and in demanded work that will afford a good living to 
everyone using them with tolerable judgment and industry. It 
is wrong for a person knowingly to waste God-given bodily 
health when the wealth and knowledge of society stand ready 
to help the deserving. From one who has honestly done his or 
her best, an application to poor authorities or to charitable 
agencies will generally secure cheerful assistance, and involves 
very little disgrace.^ It is wrong to work for wages too low to 

^The disgrace that is necessary to deter one from dropping to poor relief 
before doing all he can to avoid it, is removed at once by knowledge that 
the person applying is not in fault. In especially bad times many could 



5i8 Getting a Living. 

maintain one's strength. To do this keeps down wages for all 
persons in the same employment. If the work is wanted, higher 
wages will be paid. If it is not wanted, the sooner the workers 
find it out the better, that they may turn to something else 
before wasting life. 

The Parasitic Trades is a name applied by Mr. and Mrs. 
Webb to those in which the support of the workers costs more 
than the amount of their pay, the gain falling to the employer 
as profit, or to his customers in lower price, balanced by the loss 
to the relatives who partially support the workers, and by the 
loss to society in poor fund taxes, or in waste in the underfed of 
its aggregate of human strength for production. The parasitic 
gain is in effect a public bonus to unfit industries, on which they 
thrive to the injury of legitimate trade, as a great tumor feeds 
upon and destroys the human body. To the extent to which 
reasonable demand for higher wages, by workers of normal 
independence, would give the products of such labor higher 
value and higher prices, the consumers gaining from the low 
prices of these trades are parasites on society. The employer 
also is a parasite so far as his gain is excessive. In those 
sweated trades in which the poorly paid hand work would be 
done as cheaply by machinery, it is the workers themselves who 
are the parasites, in clinging to, and prolonging the existence of, 
trades in which they are not wanted, and in which their work 
cannot be made to yield the support they have. Neither em- 
ployer nor consumer has here a parasitic gain, since profit would 
be as high, and price as low, if machinery was used under 
higher wages. But as from lack of choice the poor workers 
are not responsible, it is society that is in fault — the employer 
most of all if by enterprise in using machinery he is able to 
remedy the conditions without personal loss. At any rate it is 
his duty to make active effort for relief of suffering among 
workers in his trade. In work by children that lessens their 
growth or education, and their life's usefulness, the parasitic 
gain falls to the parents, to the employer in profit too high, or to 

accept poor relief without loss of standing. Hence, besides being prevented, 
by the inevitable ruin involved, there is no need for the state to "eradicate 
every element of degradation from the working of the poor law, so that self- 
respecting people unable to get work may willingly resort to it, as an ex- 
pedient designed to maintain the people's standard of life." (Hobson) 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 519 

buyers of his goods in prices too low. There is parasitic gain, 
not only in every case in which one's pay is lower than the mar- 
ket value of his labor when properly sold, but in every case 
where anything sold below market price is wanted by the buyer 
to the extent of paying more. Distinctively, however, a para- 
sitic industry is one that could not exist without the help of its 
workers from relatives and from poor funds, or without its 
waste of young life beyond what its low pay will repair; as 
those industries under a protective tariff are parasitic that per- 
manently depend on the tariif addition to selling price, not 
being able to exist without this contribution taxed from con- 
sumers. In England, by reason of the helplessness of many 
thousands of sweated workers, parasitism in industry, it is 
believed, exists and flourishes now to the extent of a serious 
drain on the nation's productive power, and of a serious addi- 
tion to the people's misery. 

The Remedy for Parasitism in All These Cases, beyond en- 
forcement of factory laws and tenement sanitation, with tariff 
reform, is to teach the workers to know and compare the trades 
they may choose, the places to which they may go, and the 
better paid grades of work to which diligence may raise them ; 
also to teach the necessity of alertness in bargaining in order to 
get in wages what work is normally worth — of drawing on 
employers' competition with one another to hire workers, and of 
acting together in unions where that is practicable. The means 
of teaching this knowledge include public school courses fitting 
all for bread winning at least, whether college is entered later or 
not ; libraries and newspapers filled with practical information 
of business ; and a public opinion ready to aid in special philan- 
thropic effort, whether conducted by government or by private 
citizens, to lift up into self-helping independence such classes as 
the submerged tenth in cities and the blacks of the South. 
Public opinion can spread the labor union condemnation of the 
indolently selfish practice of wage cutting by workers partialk 
supported from other sources. For others having no extra 
means of support, wages are thus brought sometimes below a 
living rate. Young people, from childhood up, should be 
taught to prize not only efficiency in work, but also the neces- 
sary accomipaniment of tact for selling labor at its full value. 
This degree of unionism needs to be urg:ed everywhere. Zeal 



520 Getting a Living. 

to inculcate diligence was long carried too far, in the idea that 
a boy should not be concerned about his wages, but commencing 
before the whistle blew, and working to the last moment, should 
strive to outdo his fellows in pleasing the employer. It is well 
that most of the boys now learn soon to know better. Diligence 
in bargaining — in seeing that one's time and opportunities are 
most effectively utilized — requires intenser and higher energy 
than does diligence in mechanical working, and as discipline to 
character is far more valuable. 

Restriction by Law of Amateur and of Home Work. But 
as to restricting or even prohibiting by law, as some writers 
recommend in England, and as many American garment mak- 
ers and other unionized workers desire,^ the right of amateur 
work by young people for wages, and of home work by women 
in the sweated trades, it is well that such legislation in America 
would be unconstitutional.^ Beyond factory laws and sanitary 

^Teaching All to Press for Highest Wages. Girls living at home 
might easily be taught that the honorable and womanly way is first to ac- 
quire a habit of working well, and then to earn and insist on as much pay 
as that of other girls compelled to support themselves — not to childishly 
accept as spending money anything offered, regardless of the effect on regu- 
lar wages. Consciousness of being a kind of half worker, any further than 
is necessary in the process of learning, weakens diligence, and tends to drag 
efficiency down to the level of the low pay. For a time, while reaching a 
position of advantage to bargain, it would be better for one passing from 
the learning stage to work well and let the employer have some parasitic 
gain. Possession of two sources of support has always lowered pay. This 
was the case a century ago with Swiss families working a part of the year 
at weaving, but depending mainly on farming. It has lately been the same 
with country women in New England who make up clothing for manufac- 
turers In Boston. Everywhere, in view of the ruinous effect on wages and 
character, public opinion should frown on this dull and indolent acquies- 
cence In wages based on the standard of living, and should Insist on a 
practice of getting full market value for labor. Besides giving a spirit of 
demand to the worker, It would not be difficult to make employers, even In 
trades not unionized, ashamed to offer a weak bargainer less than her work's 
market value. 

20f Subcontracting the same may be said. Workers must be able to 
take care of themselves in Its close bargaining and brisk working. Their 
Inability to do so would expose them to loss In other ways. It was in the 
barbarous village that one could not call things his own, nor buy, sell, and 
hire as he chose. To possess civilization's freedom, each must learn how to 
use it — to get along with the minimum of restriction for public health and 



The Public's Part in Uplifting Wage Earners. 521 

regulation of tenements, and beyond some restriction on those 
giving out material to be made up in the workers' homes/ — the 
only sound cure of the sweating evils is to teach people to take 
care of themselves — at least in America, where people have not 
yet sunk to the point of needing to be placed under guardian- 
ship. Restriction by law of healthful work by adults in their 
own homes, on their own materials, despite their unreasonable 
hours, would be removal of trivial and naturally remedied evils 
by establishing in their stead a rarely equalled tyranny. Such a 
policy, instead of lifting people from their helplessness, would 
settle them in it worse than before; and if in time they were 
not exploited or neglected by a bureaucracy of state officials, 
human nature would have changed indeed. The poor widow 
working in her bedroom ''all the hours God made" will be regu- 
lated effectually by nature, in her breaking down and dying if 
not otherwise. Very few in one year, and none in three years, 
can do as large a yearly aggregate of work in long days as in 
days of the usual length. The amateur and temporary work 
needed by young people for learning will not harm the regular 

safety. The more reliable the workers, and hence the less the need for the 
contractor to watch them, the more ready the employer will be to do without 
him, and to hire the workers directly. He will not pay the contractor for 
watching workers and bearing risk unless the latter's service is worth its 
cost. Moreover, subcontractors competing to hire help raise wages above 
what they would be if the women went singly for work to the wholesaler. 

^The American States Forbid the Wholesaler when notified by the in- 
spector, to give out work to any one who is not complying with the tenement 
license law, and require him to keep a list of all to whom work is given. 
Persons who work during the day are not given a license to work at night 
at home. Garments made in violation of law must bear a tag marked 
"tenement made." The British regulation is similar, though it is made 
much more strict and minute by the new act of 1901. In the New Zealand 
law the influence of socialistic unionism appears in the requirement that the 
practically prohibitory disadvantage of the tag shall be borne by all 
goods made by persons w^orking alone in homes. To them a license is de- 
nied, and the house in which two persons work together, though members of 
the family, is a factory, subject to rigid inspection as to hours, etc. Gar- 
ment work given out from a factory to be done elsewhere may not be sub- 
let, or done otherwise than on the receiver's own premises, by himself or by 
others paid in wages. In Austria, where, as in New Zealand, nearly any- 
thing is constitutional in trade restriction, a law prohibits some kinds of 
sewing by women in their homes, requiring it to be done in factories. 



522 Getting a Living. 

worker that knows how to do his part, or that is in a trade 
worth following. 

Mr. and Mrs. Webb's Plan of a National Minimum^ seems 
to be sound as to laws for a minimum of well-being in educa- 
tion, in tenement sanitation, and in factory regulation, but 
untenable as to a minimum of wages, and also as to a minimum 
of leisure for men except in a few occupations (p. 442-5). In 
advanced states the minimum of well-being by law for the 
defective classes is now carried well toward the point of making 
defectiveness desirable for the sake of the public aid it secures. 
Under a law throwing on the state all those unable to earn in 
private employment a fixed minimum wage, it is improbable 
that any system of aid and discipline in public labor, adminis- 
tered by the wisest and best government possible, could ap- 
proach in desirable results the discipline of having to go into 
the market and earn a living in one's own way, assisted into 
making that the best possible way by the varied protection, 
instruction, and encouragement outlined above, but with noth- 
ing to fall back upon except the unattractive support of a 
pauper. As previously explained (p. 338), it is unlikely that 
a minimum wage law will ever be a passable success. But the 
progress of the past and of the present proves that there are 
immense possibilities in raising the helpless to a plane of manly 
self-support, on which each for himself will pass well above a 
good minimum in every respect. 

^See their "Industrial Democracy." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

LABOR LAWS. 

Factory, Mine, and Railroad Laws, in all countries possess- 
ing such industries on a considerable scale, have been found ab- 
solutely necessary to protect working people from irreparable 
injury. President F. A. Walker said that Great Britain's 
elaborate code of factory and mine laws — truly helping the 
people to help themselves — are a model for the world, a monu- 
ment of prudent and far-seeing statesmanship;^ and that judi- 
ciously combined with laws fostering frugality, they had mar- 
velously elevated the masses. The English economists were 
almost unanimously opposed to factory laws in 1847 ^^^ earlier, 
claiming that restriction of freedom of contract would event- 
ually harm the working classes by hampering industry ; that 
like merchants and manufacturers, the wage earners, notwith- 
standing their poverty and ignorance, would be led by self- 
interest to act so as to bring best results for all, going promptly 
where wages were highest, refusing to work in dangerous 
mines, and thus forcing owners to make them safe. The mis- 
take of the economists was admitted by 1861, in Prof. New- 
march's declaration that the success of the factory laws, sweep- 
ing away festering discontent, had proved "3. security against 
foreign competition, a guarantee of power, a fund of undivided 
profits."^ Under the laws both the employer and the workman 

'^Atlantic Monthly, June, 1890. The British industrial regulation is now- 
made especially effective by the fact that the Home Secretary, without the 
delay of new legislation, is given many discretionary powers to apply the 
factory and health acts to unregulated trades or kinds of shops when, after 
careful Inquiry, he deems such extension advisable for the public welfare. 
Reposing such power and confidence In officials secures the best performance 
of duty, and does not endanger liberty under the active public opinion of 
England, but will not be safe In America until better men are placed In 
office. 

^Webb, "Problems," 104. Similar declarations in i860, by members of 

(523) 



524 Getting a Living. 

have the liberty to do all that will not result in public injury; 
without the laws the workman has liberty unlimited, but his 
need for a quick supply of food leaves him the power to do 
nothing but accept whatever dangerous conditions the employer 
may offer. As trade unionism makes for all unionized shops 
a common rule of wages and of connected conditions, shifting 
the competition of employers to management and to use of 
machinery, so factory laws make for all a common rule of 
hours, ventilation, etc., preventing competition in saving by 
drawing on the health and safety of the workers. For justifia- 
ble competition, unionism and factory laws leave plenty of 
room. What they prevent is inhumanity toward the weak. 

With Women and Children the Justification is Ample for 
Many Restrictions in conditions of labor. Those women and 
children who work in factories are seldom sufficiently independ- 
ent to take care of themselves. By the highly perfected system 
of labor laws of Massachusetts, which leads the American states 
in this respect, and ranks now perhaps near Great Britain and 
Switzerland,^ no minor under eighteen years, and no woman, 
can be employed in a factory more than fifty-eight hours a 
week, nor between 10 o'clock at night and 6 o'clock in the morn- 
ing. Every workshop employing five or more women or chil- 
dren must be so ventilated and cleaned as to avoid injury to 
their health, so far as practicable. Suitable toilet rooms for 
each sex separately are required. No child under fourteen may 
be permitted to clean machinery in motion, and no child under 
thirteen may be employed anywhere during school hours unless 
during the year next preceding the time of work he shall have 
attended school thirty weeks. Up to thirteen years the state 
reserves the time of children for growth and for school, to 

Parliament that had opposed the ten-hour law of 1847, are quoted in Prof. 
George Gunton's "Wealth and Progress." 

^In educational facilities for the middle and lower classes, Great Britain 
is yet far behind the advanced American states, and far behind Switzerland 
and Germany. The British free public school system was not established 
until 1870, and now, together with the many endowed private schools, gives 
high school instruction to a very small proportion of the common people, 
though few of their children, w^hatever the school facilities, could afford to 
refrain long from going to work. Lack of education as the chief handicap 
of British Industry Is ably discussed by Alfred Mosely In The World's Work, 
Jan. 1903. 



Labor Laws. 525 

prevent neglect of their own welfare, and for the sake of intel- 
ligence in its future citizens. Healthy, moral, intelligent people 
make a healthy, moral, intelligent state, and rise higher than 
they could without these qualities in material wealth and aggre- 
gate well-being. By preserving its people, through factory 
laws, the state preserves itself. So far as in any age the state 
is lacking, and its laws to enforce justice, regular production 
languishes, barbarism prevails, and many of the weaker perish. 
In cities and factory towns it is not safe to trust the employ- 
ment of children to their parents. Unlike country districts, ac- 
quaintance of people with one another in cities is not sufficient 
to admit of restraint by public opinion, while in factories and 
stores there are opportunities to work children hurtfully, to the 
employer's profit.^ Parents are often ignorant of the injury, 

^Work by Children on farms, as work at home anywhere, and light jobs 
for them in cities during school vacations, are beneficial to health and char- 
acter, and are an essential part of practical education. In the mind of a 
child growing up without the discipline of having regular home tasks to 
perform, in addition to the tasks of school, there is usually a fertile field for 
discontent and bad habits. But, to avoid checking growth, it is doubtless 
best that no one under about fifteen years, however strong, should undertake 
to work regularly for wages in a factory, shop, or store. Fourteen years is 
the limit of the law in a number of American states — sixteen years in some 
states for children unable to read and write in English. In New York the 
factory inspector may refuse permission to work to any minor who lacks the 
requisite strength. The British law permitting children of eleven (now 
twelve) to fourteen years to work in factories half the day, with compul- 
sory attendance at school during the other half, seems as much as the state 
can afford to grant in child labor, whatever the family's need of the child's 
earnings. 

Why Child Labor Does Not Pay. For the same reason that, whatever 
the emergency of widowhood or orphanhood, it would be foolish in the par- 
ent to make a boy weakly, short-lived, and ignorant for the sake of the pit- 
tance he could earn between eight and ten, — it is almost as foolish to put 
him to work between ten and fourteen, since for every dollar he earned then 
he would ordinarily be Incapacitated for, and prevented from, earning 
twenty dollars later (in many cases before reaching twenty-one), besides the 
loss to himself in reduced total of enjoyment during life, and the loss to the 
state in his life's reduced total of wealth production. If the children of the 
poor, by means of charity and of various shifts, can be supported without 
wage work up to eight and ten, there is no good reason why they cannot be 
suonorted in the same wav up to fourteen. For its own gain the state can 
well afford to assist from its poor funds, while, In view of the object and the 



526 Getting a Living. 

and sometimes care more for the wages than for the child. 
Such matters as ventilation, fire escapes, and enclosing danger- 
temporary nature of the state aid, parents and child would be less pauper- 
ized than lifted up in purpose and resourcefulness. Generally, perhaps, 
under rising pride, they would contrive to do without the state aid. 

Short-Sightedness and Inhumanity, in permitting child labor, have 
sometimes gone to lengths almost incredible. Eighty years ago children as 
young as five and six years were found at work in British cotton mills, and 
children's wages were an encouragement to early marriage and large fami- 
lies, as the case is now in Lancashire, the average family of the factory 
operative being considerably larger than the average in the total working 
class of England. {Ne^ England Magazine, Dec. 1901.) A few of six to 
eight years, in the cotton mills of the Southern States, have lately been work- 
ing as unpaid helpers of older sisters, and many of nine and ten years for 
wages, eleven and twelve hours a day, often in a night shift. In Southern 
mills a bright girl of ten earns in some cases as much as 75 cents a day, 
though more commonly half that sum ; many children earn only 20 cents, 
and on down to 10 cents, the average in North Carolina, for children under 
fourteen, being 29 cents in 1901. Young children in factories, as a rule, 
are pitiably thin and pale, often staggering from weakness at quitting time. 
The injury is made worse by their eating a cold dinner in the mill air with- 
in twenty minutes, and by the poor housekeeping in their homes. 

The Profit in Child Labor Necessitates Regulation by Law. Strong 
opposition to child labor laws by some employers, especially those in the 
textile and glass industries, shews that, under certain conditions, such labor 
is profitable to them. This profit, it is evident from the rapid increase of 
child labor during the last ten years in the South, and in some states of the 
North, would soon lead (among employers depending on cheapness of labor 
instead of good management) to the brutal parasitism on child life that 
blackened the early history of the factory system in England (page 182). 
With English experience as a guide, there is no excuse for permitting such 
abuses to grow up now. A lady investigator, writing in the World's Work, 
Oct. 1901, stated that Alabama's law of 1887, fixing the day at 8 hours for 
children, was repealed in 1894, on the promise of Massachusetts capitalists 
to build a mill in Alabama, which mill in 1901 worked 50 children 11% 
hours a day; that much of the opposition to the new law was from Northern 
owned mills, whose proprietors avoided the child labor laws of their own 
states by building in the South; and that 1,200 under twelve were in Ala- 
bama mills, 30 per cent under twelve in one South Carolina mill. Many 
ignorant operatives in the South want their little ones to work, not noticing 
their pale faces and fragile forms, and being taught in some cases that "God 
put it into the hearts of good men to build the mill" that affords employment. 

Present Child Labor Laws Must be Made More Effective. As 
shown by Mrs. Lillian Betts in The Outlook of March 14, 1903, the child 
labor law is almost nullified in New York city by parents who swear that 



Labor Laws. 527 

ous openings could not be entrusted to unions, few of whose 
members fully appreciate their importance to health and safety, 

children of ten and twelve years are fourteen. Many hundreds of such 
children are in the large factories. Though in late years more complete 
work by factory inspectors (New York state now has over fifty, including a 
number of women) has been fairly successful in keeping children out of 
sweat-shops, little can now be done to remove factory children having false 
age certificates. It would seem that it will be necessary to go further in 
ignoring parents' statements and in having the age and strength of children 
passed upon by a health officer, as was required to some extent by a New 
York law of 1899. (Since the preceding matter was written the New York 
law of 1903 has been enacted, providing for further inquiry as to ages.) 
Minnesota, whose age limit is sixteen, the highest that is demanded even by 
unionists and socialists, and whose average is one child worker to 96 adults 
against 33 for the whole country, imposes a fine on the parent as well as on 
the employer for breaking the child labor laws. 

The Policy of the Lower Working Class, especially foreigners (see 
Miss Addams's "Democracy and Ethics"), to depend on children for support 
has very bad effects. Besides stunting the children's growth, preventing their 
education, and turning them by exhaustion and bad associations to drunken- 
ness and vice in general, — it also induces parents to have families too large, 
to give up work too young, and to neglect efficiency and thrift. In recom- 
mending large families President Roosevelt meant of course those parents 
able to let children grow and attend school until at least fourteen, and 
meant especially the many well-to-do couples who now have few children or 
none, and who are being variously harmed in character by their anti-social 
selfishness, while decrease of the higher and increase of the lower grades of 
people are endangering society's progress. Strict enforcement of good laws 
on child labor, on compulsory education, and on tenement house regulation, 
would soon bring a marked improvement in the crowded and increasing 
slum people, with whose mercenary votes, bought with jobs and favors, the 
boss now threatens the success of American institutions. So long as the law 
permits them to follow their shiftless and mercenary instincts as parents, 
they will hardly become fit voters. 

New Laws in the South to Restrict Child Labor. Up to 1903 child 
labor was unregulated by law in Southern cotton mills — probably the only 
ones in the world not thus restricted unless exception is made of the few mills 
in China. The let-alone doctrine has always prevailed in the South, partly 
by reason of slavery; and factory laws were specially objected to because 
of the desire to attract manufacturers. But in 1903, previous to which time 
Tennessee, Louisiana and Florida were the only Southern states having an 
age limit for children in factories {some had for mines), laws fixing an 
age limit for factories were enacted in Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, 
Alabama, the two Carolinas, and Texas, and enactment of such a law was 
favorably considered in Georgia. Alabama and South Carolina make their 



528 Getting a Living. 

while among unorganized workmen, in mines or factories, few 

restriction light. The former permits none to work under *:en, none under 
twelve unless the father is dead or disabled, and none under thirteen at 
night. Under the Wisconsin law the county judge determines whether. 
work by a child under fourteen shall be permitted by reason of family need. 

Agitation for Child Labor Reform has lately been more active in 
America than ever before. For several years in the South, to obtain new 
laws, it has been carried on by press, pulpit, worpen's societies, and com- 
mittees of influential citizens, aided by the labor union and philanthropic 
sentiment of the whole country (as in England sixty years ago). In the 
North the agitation has been almost as strong for improvement of existing 
laws. New York's law of 1903, just enacted, extends age and hour limita- 
tion from children in factories and stores to those in the streets, regulating 
messenger service, and fixing an age limit for bootblacks at twelve and for 
newsboys at ten. 

Street Life Makes Boys Averse to Regular Work w^hen older, and Is 
terribly effective as a school in vice and crime. Because with a few excep- 
tional boys street life has proved to be an advantage, as a stepping stone to 
higher things, is no more an argument in its favor than is army life in a 
bloody war to be desired because by such life many a man has been bene- 
fited. New York's new law also, for the large cities, repeals the previous 
permission of vacation work between twelve and fourteen, and forbids fac- 
tory work by a young child as helper of an older sister. The movement for 
child labor reform has been likewise active in Pennsylvania, where the coal 
strike investigation revealed wholesale use of false certificates or disregard 
of law in the working of children in coal breakers and textile mills, the 
latter running at night. A new law of 1903 raised the age for coal breakers, 
but the textile employers defeated the clause relating to their Industry. In 
Illinois too a large increase of child labor in Chicago aroused attention that 
led to enactment in 1903 of a child labor law considered a model. It for- 
bids work by boys at night — still permitted in the glass works of Indiana, 
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. A new law was especially needed In 
Illinois, because, for work in the glass factories at Alton, bad people had 
gathered and adopted many orphans from adjacent cities. In Germany the 
socialists are now urging reduction of child labor, claiming that a million 
under fourteen are employed there. In Great Britain also an effort to 
check overwork of little children after school hours Is being made. {The 
Forum, 1902.) See figures and recommendations, U. S. Bulletin, Sept. 1903. 

Increase of Child Labor. In the United States wage earners under 
sixteen years in manufacturing increased 59 per cent between 1870 and 1880, 
decreased 34 per cent in the next decade, and increased 40 per cent In the 
next 'decade, to 1900, the total in that year being 168,624, against 181,921 In 
1880. The decrease during these two decades was caused by new laws. 
In Massachusetts children under sixteen comprised 5.05 per cent of all wage 
earners in manufacturing In 1870, but only 1.94 per cent in 1890 — increased 



Labor LaiK.'s. 529 

would be prepared to refuse employment because of unneces- 
sary danger.^ 

to 2.5 per cent in 1900, the number in that 3-ear (12,556) showing an in- 
crease of 45 per cent over the number in 1890 (8,667). ^^^ i° South Caro- 
lina the number increased in this decade from 2,309 to 8,560 (271 per cent\ 
the children forming 10.15 per cent of the total in 1890, but 17.8 per cent in 
1900. South Carolina leads in child labor, both in increase and in percentage 
of total workers. The effect of Massachusetts laws may be seen in her small 
percentage of total as compared with that of South Carolina. In the entire 
South the factor}- children under ten years are believed to exceed live 
thousand (J. G. Brooks), and there are more girls than boys. 

Effect of Removal to Cities. In Great Britain, from 1881 to 1891, 
there was a remarkable increase of factory- workers under fifteen, of both 
sexes, due largely to removal from countrv* to cit}-. This must be mainly the 
cause of the late increase in America. The comparison against the South 
in the increase of child labor is mitigated considerably by the fact that, her 
cotton mills being new, there was with her a greater change than in the 
North from man-employing to child-employing manufacturing. Also, a 
child in the South is as mature at twelve as one in the North is at fourteen, 
and in Southern mills windows are open most of the year. Because even to 
the employer child labor is unprofitable when judged accurately, it has lately 
been decreasing fast in the South, apart from the agitation against it. {Am. 
Jour. Sociology, March, 1903.) In few cases will the able employer, with 
good machinery, worry long with child labor, however low its pay. 

^Necessity for Tenement Laws. Especially are laws necessary in 
cities, under the complicated systems of water supplv and sewerage, to keep 
buildings in safe and sanitary condition. Instead of being small, isolated 
houses controlled by one family as In the country-, they are high structures 
in solid blocks, crowded by many families, including a large class so poor 
and heedless that they would rent and live in places fit only for pigs if such 
tenements were permitted to exist. In the brisk demand from such people 
for rooms, propertv- owners gain by neglecting repairs. A recent bill urged 
by them to amend and weaken the New York tenement law was opposed, not 
only by philanthropic societies, but also by many of the tenants themselves, 
who know that the law is their dependence for light and air. In recent 
years many slum buildings in New York and London, condemned by the 
city authorities, have been torn down and replaced by the owners with 
structures modern and healthful. 

Better Housing, secured in this way and by cheap transit to the sub- 
urbs, is perhaps the chief means of elevating the poor. Nothing is more 
effective than a pleasant home to awaken self-respect and effort to improve. 
In Europe housing for the poor is a serious matter, partly because of the 
rapid growth of cities. In Berlin, about tvvent\- years ago, the annual death 
rate among 70,000 living in single rooms was 163 per 1,000, while in families 
having three or four rooms it fell below 20. In England, about the same 
34 



530 Getting a Living. 

Laws Only Where Necessary, however, is the rule. Few 
laws are required to protect wage workers in the farming states 
that have no mines or large factories. State laws licensing 
doctors and dentists found qualified, and prohibiting others from 
practising, seem clearly desirable. In these two professions it 
is easy to impose on the ignorant. The buyer of their services 
cannot determine for himself whether he is getting good value, 
or whether he is being seriously harmed. There is an exten- 
sion of the same principle in the recent laws of many states for 
licensing barbers and plumbers, whose work relates to the pub- 
lic health. Some states regard the welfare of horses, with 
laws licensing blacksmiths. Of course, state restrictions mi^ht 
be multiplied until mediaeval conditions were restored, and by 
treating buyers as children or as imbeciles the licensed sellers 
were given, to their own gain, considerable monopolistic power. 
It is best to let people take care of themselves where they can do 
so effectively. The blacksmith law was declared unconstitu- 
tional in Illinois, on the ground that for such a restriction of 
freedom of contract and of work there was no reason of danger 
to public health or welfare.^ An owner able to keep a horse will 
see defective shoeing and prevent its repetition, and whatever 
the injury it will not spread to the public, like those contagious 
diseases of cattle and trees the state rightly controls by law.^ 

time, the death rate for children under five was less than 3 per cent for the 
upper classes, but between 6 and 7 per cent for the whole people. (Brooks, 
247.) Many thousands in Berlin now live underground. London has 149,- 
524 tenements of one room, 2,000 of which have 5 or 6 occupants. They 
have decreased from 172,502 in 1891 ; those of 2, 3 and 4 rooms increased. 
^New Zealand Carries Labor Laws Further than any other country, 
but is now nearly equalled in this respect by Victoria and New South Wales. 
In New Zealand no woman may be employed in a work room more than 48 
hours a week (and no man since 1902). She may work overtime only 28 
days in a year, not exceeding 3 hours a day, not over 2 consecutive days, 
and not at pay less than i3 cents an hour. A permit to work overtime must 
be obtained from the inspector. No person under 18, and no woman, may be 
employed for more than 4% hours without at least half an hour for a meal. 
This is a rule by law in Great Britain, and seems to be a good regulation, 
as are some others of New Zealand requiring Saturday or Wednesday after- 
noon holidays, which in Great Britain, by the better force of union demand 
and custom (by law for cotton mills), are coming to prevail in many indus- 
tries, with the result of preserving and improving Sabbath observance. In 
New Zealand all stores, excepting such as those of druggists and confection- 



Labor Laws. 53 1 

Anti-Truck and Weekly Payment Laws. IMany states have 
statutes requiring wages to be paid in money, not in truck — that 
is, goods from a store kept by the employer; and statutes re- 

ers, and even street hawking, are required by law, with a penalty' as high as 
$25 fine, to be closed at 6 o'clock, and all offices, excepting such as those of 
railways and newspapers, must be closed at 5. The closing hours for stores 
in New South Wales are 6 for four days of the week, i for one day, and 10 
for one day, these days being determined for the different districts by 
proclamation of the governor. Drivers of milk wagons must be given one 
holiday each week. The store hours of West Australia are 8 to 6. Other 
radical labor laws of Australia are described in Chapters XII., XXL, and 
XXVII. 

What Will Be the Results? As in Australia the people are suffi- 
ciently independent and capable to take care of themselves (are not like the 
tribal villagers), and as these colonies have no large cities and not much 
manufacturing, it seems that with them labor legislation is seriously over- 
done. In their socialistic determination to keep the ablest from getting too 
rich and powerful — to have the state conduct the railways and many other 
services at cost in order that there may be the least opportunity for private 
income from rent, interest, and profits — they will no doubt find that the peo- 
ple's gain in holding back the few is greatly outweighed by the people's loss 
in holding back and enfeebling the many, together with the industries upon 
which depend the welfare of all. A nation afraid to give freedom to men's 
enterprise will reap in stagnation the penalty reaped by a family of sons 
who are afraid to go out of sight of home; and besides, energy that is pre- 
vented from serving by building and trading is easily turned to robbing by 
political scheming. The danger to liberty from the power of the rich and 
shrewd would hardly be so great as the danger from growth of petty 
t}'ranny in such laws as those for Australian stores. In needlessly forcing 
people to do what they would have done by choice, such laws remove the 
need for and dry up the morality which would lead to righteous choice in 
other questions that will arise in time. Nothing would more quickly destroy 
the spirit of friendly helpfulness among neighbors than to have state officers 
inquiring around to enforce it. If morality is to exist, it must be depended 
on. The state, it would seem, restricting its interference by law to the mini- 
mum that is unavoidably necessary, will find its wider field in teaching and 
encouraging the people to emulate and get the benefit of the ability of the 
few, and thus to secure the best in service and progress while overcoming 
the danger of being mastered. 

The Fact that Tsnranny is Voted Upon Themselves by the people does 
not make it greatly different from the t\'ranny of the past, all of which grew 
up by consent of freemen who might have averted it if they had had a tithe 
of present opportunities to learn from history. Instead of the king and his 
barons maintaining t3'ranny and dividing the spoil, Australasia has employ- 
ers protected by tariffs, and unions of skilled workers favored by law in 



532 Getting a Living. 

quiring wages to be paid weekly or fortnightly, excepting em- 
ployees on railways and in some other occupations. These laws 
have been set aside in a number of states for infringing the 
right of free contract, especially when applying to others than 
corporations, which are created by the state with conditions, 
and hence do not possess all the constitutional rights of persons. 
Frequent payment of wages promotes keeping out of debt, and 
saving of money, as well as that quickness of turning goods into 
money, and money into goods, that utilizes capital to the utmost, 
builds up business, lowers prices, and raises wages. Sailors, 
who get their pay at long intervals in large sums, lack expe- 
rience in handling money, and are perhaps the most improvi- 
dent of all workers. Anti-truck laws are necessary to prevent 
gross imposition by overcharging ignorant miners or laborers. 
When these are employed at a distance from settlements, the 
company store is a necessary evil; but it often flourishes near 
towns, sometimes under an apparently separate firm, upon the 
patronage of employees whose wages are absorbed in the free 
buying promoted by credit, and who find out that their positions 
are safest if they give it all their trade. It has seemed a pity, 
in some cases, that the state did not possess more power as to 
company stores, and as to regulating the weighing of coal mined 
by the ton. To protect the poor and ignorant here, somewhat 
as children, is not class legislation, but is proper exercise of the 
state's police power.^ But the validity in most of the states, as 
in England, of anti-truck laws, may be extended to all the states 

various ways. These strong and united interests, together with a state 
bureaucracy comprising in Victoria about a twelfth of the adult males, 
might find it easy and profitable to fasten a heavy parasitic burden on a sub- 
missive and divided, though much larger, remainder, many of whom could 
be made to believe that the burden was for their own benefit. Moreover, 
what is at first tyranny may soon become necessary regulation, since by sub- 
mitting to it people sink to the mediaeval condition of incapacity for self- 
direction. 

^F. J. Stimson, "Hand Book to the Labor Law of the United States," 112, 
130. This useful book, published in 1896, and a small volume of the pre- 
vious year by the same author, "Labor in Its Relation to Law," give a brief 
summary of their subject for the general reader. The labor laws of most 
of the commercial countries of the world are summarized in the U. S. Labor 
Bulletins of 1900-1903; also in one volume of the Industrial Commission's 
reports, 1900-1902. 



Labor Laws. 533 

by the example and influence of a United States Supreme Court 
decision of 1901, upholding a Tennessee law that requires com- 
pany store orders to be redeemed in money after thirty days.^ 

A Fair Wage Clause is inserted in the contracts for public 
work in many cities of Great Britain, requiring that the wages 
paid by the contractor be at the prevailing rate of the locality, 
which is the union rate of places unionized, and is generally 
construed to mean the union rate. Also, goods are bought only 
of fair houses. This form of concession to workingmen has 
long been made in many American states, by city ordinances or 
state laws fixing the pay of city laborers somewhat higher than 
the usual rate, or resulting in payment to inferior men of a 
higher rate than they could get from private employers. In 
England, until after the labor commission's inquiry in 1894, 
public wages, as a rule, were a little lower than private, yet the 
difference was balanced with holidays and greater steadiness of 
work. But the fair wage clause has appeared in America for 
public contractors also, as well as for men hired by the city 
directly. New York's statute, requiring in every public con- 
tract a clause making the contract void if ''the prevailing rate 
of wages" was not paid, — was declared unconstitutional in 
1901. Reasons stated by Judge O'Brien included the follow- 
ing: Because the statute permitted and required expenditure 
of public money for other than public purposes, and thus took 
property of taxpayers without due process of law ; because, the 
city not being the agent of the state in local improvements, the 
statute invaded rights of liberty and property (for no reason of 
public health or safety) in denying to the city and to the con- 
tractor the right to agree with employees on wages ; because in 
such denial it attempted to make innocent acts penal. ^ (This 

^L'^. S. Labor Bulletin No. 40. A needed law for protecting the worker 
from involuntary spending was the British statute of 1884 prohibiting use of 
liquor saloons as meeting places for payment of wages. To some extent 
saloons have been thus used in America by certain grades of contractors. 
One success of the lake dock workers was getting rid of contractors that kept 
saloons themselves, and held the workers In a kind of serfdom. 

'U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 35. The Indiana law requiring officials and 
public contractors, on criminal penalty, to pay at least 20 cents per hour for 
common labor, was set aside in 1903, for being class legislation. Such it cer- 
tainly seemed to be. Not specifying that only those workers worth the rate 
should be hired, and it being impossible to find enough men of such efficiency, 



534 Getting a Living. 

ruling was applied in a later case to the city's direct employment 
as well as to contractors.) Two of the seven judges dissented, 
on the ground that specifying the pay of labor specifies its 
quality, as does specifying the kind of materials in a building 
contract. This is doubtless untrue (and there are reliable ways 
of specifying quality of labor) in the many cities having non- 
union employers that do some kinds or grades of work as well 
as or better than others whose men are in the union, and that 
also do the work at lower prices. The city's extra payment 
there for higher wages would not be for value received, but to 
favor unionism. Moreover, the New York statute, as stated in 
the decision, made the city a trustee for enforcing a law enacted 
in the interest of private parties (the unions), and thus caused 
the city's powers to be used for purposes foreign to the consti- 
tution. In any place well unionized the union generally in- 
cludes the men of all or most of the employers of the better 
grade ; but there, it would seem, the high quality and full value 
of union labor would be clear enough to secure contracts on 
merit alone, without help from state law. Also, in places 
where the union was unpopular, it would probably gain influ- 
ence more surely by proving merit than by attempting through 
legislation to force public work into the hands of its members. 

Requiring Employment on Public Work of Union Labor 
Only. This is going considerably further than the fair wage 
clause, which, in the case of common labor not closely union- 
ized, might benefit outsiders as well as unionists. Ordinances 
in a large and now rapidly increasing number of American 
cities require city work to be done by union labor alone, and 
require certain supplies to bear the union label, the latter rule 
being common in the case of city printing. It was decided by 
a Chicago court in 1898 that the board of education had the 
right to provide in a building contract that only union labor 
should be employed, if in its judgment trouble might thus be 

the law encouraged and required a free gift above market pay to laborers^ 
but no such gift to men hired at hourly pay above 20 cents. Also, if state 
charity was to be given, it could not be confined to public laborers, when 
many times more other laborers were just as needy (page 415). The differ- 
ent reasons of the New York decision were also given by the Indiana Su- 
preme Court (see Bullcti?t No, 48; also Bullct'ui No. 47 for conclusive rea- 
sons of unconstitutionality in Ohio's eight-hour law for public contractors.) 



Labor Laz^^'s. 535 

averted, and public money spent to best advantage. That would 
seem to be a sufficient reason, more solid than the claim of 
superior quality of union work — avoidance of labor trouble 
being a valuable consideration ; but such action by the board, if 
work of as good quality could be obtained of non-unionists more 
cheaply, would indicate a yielding to duress, to expectation of 
intimidation and violence.^ Later in 1898 a union labor ordi- 
nance was passed in Chicago applying to all city contracts. The 
state supreme court, in December, 1900. citing other decisions 
to the same effect, declared this ordinance unconstitutional, 
because it "amounts to a discrimination between different class- 
es of citizens, and lays down a rule which restricts competition 
and increases the cost of work." In the same decision the 

^For the members of the board to disregard their o^vn chances of re-election 
would be commendable rather than otherwise, and so it would be for them 
to ignore unionist disapproval that did not obstruct the work, if unionism 
was overdone, and if the non-unionists had good reason for their attitude 
(page 203). In the latter case the board would not have the private busi- 
ness man's reason for incurring even high cost to avoid a boycott. 

But Later the Illinois Supreme Court upheld a taxpayer's right to an 
injunction to prevent the board from carrying out a contract at a cost of 
$2,090, when the same builder offered to do the work for $1,900 if the union 
labor clause were omitted, the builder saying that he did not necessarily 
expect to employ non-unionists, but that it would be worth to him the $190 
to have the liberty' to do so in case of necessitv'. Previouslv, to induce che 
building trades council to call oif a strike on a school building, and to avert 
such strikes in the future, the board had agreed with this council to insert 
the union labor clause always. The court said that neither by requirement 
of the legislature, nor by its own discretion, could the board constitutionally 
insert the union labor clause, and thus discriminate in favor of a class 
(unionists), raise cost by limiting bidding, and require the contractor to 
give up his right to hire any one he chose. "The individual may, if he 
chooses, give away his monev; but the public officer has no such liberty, and 
no right to surrender to a committee, or any one else, the rights of those for 
whom he acts." (Labor Bulletin No. 22.) But see page 539. 

Unionism in Employment Ofiaces. For similar reasons this court set 
aside in 1903 the state law establishing free employment offices, and requir- 
ing that their lists of applicants be withheld from employers struck against. 
Here the purpose of the discrimination seemed good, as a means of securing 
the co-operation of the workers, some of whom object to these employment 
offices because of their usefulness to employers in strikes. It would be re- 
grettable if these offices, so useful to women and unskilled men, should be 
opposed. But the state can hardly be the agent of unionism, which, so far as 



53^ Getting a Living. 

court declared invalid also an eight-hour ordinance of Chicago 
applying to public contractors, saying that no statute can pro- 
vide that the employer and employee (where no matter of health 
or safety justifies exercise of police power) may not agree with 
each other as to what time shall constitute a day's work.^ Sim- 
it Is justified, will not need such help. As the confidence of both employers 
and workers is needed to make these offices successful, it seems that they 
might receive all applications from both sides without raising the question 
of unionism, any further than to notify applicants of a strike, as one of the 
conditions of the employment offered. This is recommended by the Indus- 
trial Commission. In the field where unionism is settled and permanent, 
comprising nearly all the skilled trades, the workers rarely need employment 
offices or public help of any kind. They have wages easily kept high, have 
the union's out-of-work benefits, and are assisted to positions by the union's 
local officials and by Its national journal's trade reports from all parts of the 
country. (Illinois re-enacted the employment office law without the invalid 
clause, and so did Wisconsin. California, 1903, will punish ($2000 and i 
year) for hiring with false report as to strikes. Is it valid?) 

^Constitutionality of Laws Regulating Labor for Public Contractors. 
"That part of this clause in the specifications which makes the contractor 
liable for a forfeiture of his contract If he allows employees to work more 
than eight hours in one day Is unquestionably void and unconstitutional." 
{Labor Bulletin No. 37, Nov. 1901.) A year earlier the Supreme Court of 
Kansas, as it has done since, upheld such a law {Labor Bulletin No. 28), 
on the ground that through it the state, its reasons being immaterial, simply 
set the length of day for its cities and counties, as a person can do in the 
case of hiring on his behalf by his agents ; and that contractors knew of this 
rule in bidding. In Kansas requiring more than eight hours was 
criminal, the defendant contractor being held in jail. In setting aside a 
Sacramento eight-hour ordinance about ten years ago the court said that to 
make Its violation criminal by one not a city official was outrageous, and 
that It was invalid even in a civil suit. In the New York fair wage case 
mentioned above, the penalty was forfeiture, as In Illinois, and the city 
refused to pay the contractor. This confiscation was given by the New York 
judge as another reason of unconstitutionality. 

Extra Cost to the City, by Reason of the Short Day, would be money 
not spent for a public purpose; and this would apply to workmen hired by 
the city directly as well as to those hired by its contractor. However, the 
city, by the New York and Illinois decisions, may pay higher daily wages and 
allow shorter days than private employers, in the case of its own direct em- 
ployees, if not stopped with injunction by taxpayers charging a waste of 
public money, but may not constitutionally hold a contractor to forfeiture or 
criminal penalties for violating such provisions In his contract. He brings 
the matter into court, while In the case of direct employees it is not contested. 
In the Kansas decision It seems to be overlooked that an agent spends the 



Labor Laws. 537 

ilar eight-hour regulations have been declared unconstitutional 
in a number of states, and also laws setting wages for public 
employees. These ordinances indicate that unionists took ad- 
vantage of their political power over aldermen to get employ- 
money of the person directing him, while a city does not spend the money of 
the legislature, whose power as to such spending is limited by the rights of 
taxpayers. It seems unlikely that other high courts will hold that the state's 
reasons for limiting the day in public work to eight hours are immaterial, 
as would be the case with a person directing his agent. The U. S. Supreme 
Court in 1876 (94 U. S. Rep. 404) regarded the federal law of 1868 ''chiefly 
as in the nature of a direction from a principal to his agent that eight hours 
is deemed to be a proper length of time for a day's labor, and that his 
contracts shall be based upon that theory." This implies that in the contract 
the wages should be adjusted to hours, as v^as done (so far as the law of 
1868 was observed), not that the agent should, as was doubtless expected in 
Kansas, pay for eight hours the usual rate for ten, instead of hiring by the 
hour as the Kansas contractor did. However, for limiting the day in pub- 
lic work to eight hours, if practicable without waste of public money, the 
state would probably have sufiicient reasons now in the near approach to 
eight hours in private industry, and in the beneficent effect of the state's 
example (page 411). Constitutional power thus to limit the day for its 
direct employees Is indicated by the quotation above. 

The Eight-Hour Law Still Constitutional in the State of New York. 
In limiting public work to eight hours there need not necessarily be a waste 
of public money, since the daily rate of private industry for more hours 
may be lowered, or with that rate unchanged faster work may be required, 
or employment may be restricted to superior men (page 421). Perhaps 
these reasons were In mind when the eight-hour clause of the New York 
fair wage law was unanimously sustained in 1902 by one branch of the 
Supreme Court, but not the court of final resort. In this late decision the 
court deemed as controlling in the matter an earlier decision in which a 
court of four judges unanimously held the eight-hour clause of Buffalo's 
charter, applying both to direct employees and to contractors (and being 
merely directory as the national law had been held), to be not contrary to 
the state or national constitutions, though later a high court held that Its 
violation could not be made the basis of an Indictment for misdemeanor. 
(A''. Y. Labor Bulletin, June, 1902). But to fix hours and wages both, as 
permitted by the Kansas decision, would Involve great risk of waste of 
public money, since by union monopoly (page 236) the prevailing rate can 
be made artificially high, and since In determining what that rate Is there 
Is wide room for favoring voting workmen at the city's loss. Hence, the 
constitutional amendment now pending In New York (passing the legis- 
lature and apparently destined to be ratified by the people In 1905), for 
authorizing fair wage and eight-hour clauses, may be found to conflict with 
the constitution of the United States. Where unionism is very strong, as 



53^ Getting a Living. 

ment which they deemed the net value of their work insufficient 
to secure ; also, to set for public work a shorter day than was 
required to earn their wages in private work. If eight hours 
wef e the rule, the ordinance would be unnecessary. A charge 
of taking unfair advantage they might deny, on the ground that 
in any selling to the public it is customary to overcharge a little 
w^hen practicable.^ 

in New York, the state constitution may not be a sufficient bar against 
spending of public money for other than public purposes. 

The Latest Blow to Eight-Hour Laws was given by New York state's 
highest court in April, 1903, in a unanimous decision declaring one eight- 
hour law for contractors unconstitutional, on the ground that it discrimi- 
nated arbitrarily and unjustly between the men of contractors on public 
work and the men of contractors engaged elsewhere. Such a law certainly 
is an attempt to confer a favor on the former which the state has no power 
to confer on the latter, and which the latter's industry either does not need^ 
having a short day already from natural conditions in the labor market, 
or in the absence of such conditions could not bear. Unless by competitive 
examination the effect of high pay and short days to draw the best men 
is fully utilized, as in the postal service, all these laws are likely to result 
in waste of public money and in injury to the cause of labor (page 414). 
Yet, by seeing that efficient men are hired and pay is earned in direct em- 
ployment, and that conditions imposed on public contractors are beneficial to 
the people as a whole, not raising cost nor wasting money, — the eight-hour 
day can doubtless be made just, desirable, and constitutional in public work, 
and may become the success it now is over a large portion of the private 
field. Another eight-hour law still remains in force In New York state, 
which, for its violation, makes a public contract void. The law set aside 
in 1903 imposed a criminal penalty in a fine of $500 to $1,000, besides impos- 
ing forfeiture of the contract at the option of the city contracted with. (A^. 
Y. Labor Bulletin No. 17.) When the eight-hour day has become settled In 
any work, overtime pay (page 414) will be Implied for extra hours, as was 
lately done by a district court in the case of a war department employee. 
{U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 44.) 

^An extreme case of unionist ingenuity, in the attempt to use law^ to force 
market conditions, was the reccmmendatlon of two witnesses before the 
Industrial Commission that patents be issued with the condition that in 
producing the patented article, and all goods it is used to make, the work 
day shall not be over eight hours. 

To Avoid Graining From Sweating. In 1901 an ordinance of Paterson, 
N. J., giving the city printing to union shops, was declared void, for dis- 
criminating in favor of a private organization. Such ordinances have been 
passed in many American cities. Socialistic writers would say, with as- 
sent from unionists in general, that the city's gain, from getting by award 



Labor Laws. 539 

Wage and Hour Regulation in Franchises is the latest 
means of using law to get more pay for workers than their labor 
will sell for in the market. One street railway franchise in 

to the lowest bidder equal quality and value for less than a union em- 
ployer's charge, would come from the non-union employer's sweating of 
his workmen. This would be inconsistent with the claim that union work- 
men earn their high pay more fully than others earn their low pay — a claim 
that perhaps is usually true in the higher grades of work; though even 
then the non-unionists might be sweated by reason of bad quarters and poor 
machinery. However, with men, there is little trouble in this matter. 
Those able to do good work are just as able, as a rule, to avoid being 
sweated ; while others, in America at least, are so slow and dull, require 
so much watching, and are so ready to drop out of a job, that of the two 
parties the one most likely to be sweated is generally the employer. To 
whatever extent sweating prevailed, it would seem that by arranging the 
specifications to require high quality of work, modern equipment and 
prompt execution, the sweaters might be excluded from bidding — and this 
for the object of securing good value to the city rather than to help union- 
ism. 

In the American Army's Contracts for clothing the clauses requiring 
that all the work be done in factories conforming to state factory laws are 
doubtless constitutional, by reason of the consideration in thus guarding 
against disease. But such wcuki not be the case here yvith the British 
contract clauses, which prohibit home work and subcontracting, and pro- 
vide for fair wages and a short day. These things are doubtless desirable 
for the general welfare, but not when thus forced in favor of a few at 
extra cost to the government, with the results of promoting parasitic 
scheming and of stifling proper self-help. But the only sub-contracting 
prohibited is that not customary in the trade. And perhaps in the British 
cases the workers are so thoroughly helpless that the clauses may aid in im- 
proving conditions without exposing the government departments to risk of 
loss by union scheming. All is done under the inspection of officials, and 
under the discretion of boards, not by fixed statute. 

Where the City Should Hire Unionists Only. Yet where the city 
itself, not its contractor, is the employer, it will generally find it profitable 
to the whole public, where unionism is strong, to follow the private em- 
ployer's example and hire unionists only, complying with all the union 
conditions. An official can rightly do this in exercising his discretion, 
but it is unconstitutional, and a surrender to conditions of extortion by the 
union, for the city council by ordinance to take away the official's discretion- 
ary power, and thus require him to hire unionists, even though, as a private 
employer, he might save money and prevent injustice by hiring from an 
adequate body of non-unionists. Such an ordinance raises cost by restrict- 
ing bidding by workers, as the Chicago school board's rule restricted bid- 
ding by contractors. If there are not enough of suitable non-unionists to 



540 Getting a Living. 

Berlin requires the company to pay old age pensions, and one 
in Paris requires of the company, for its men, ten-hour days, 
six-day weeks, ten-day vacations, pay while sick, free medical 
service, and accident insurance ; and it also sets a minimum 
wage. Like factory laws, the tim^e and insurance regulations 
are good, being beneficial to both sides and to the public, and 
being liable to neglect without law. In Detroit a street railway 
franchise limits the day to ten hours. But the sick pay and free 
medicines will not only lessen the employee's ability to care for 
himself but, in America at least, would be overcharged for by 
the company, in keeping down wages and in fast working. As 
to the minimum wage, so far as there was difficulty in finding 
enough men able to earn it, and so far as lower grade men 
would be preferable at their properly low market wages, the 
company would rightly reimburse itself well by raising charges 
or by keeping the service below what it would otherwise be — by 
a tax on the public, the working class included. This effect no 
possible regulation by the public could avoid. For excessive 
regulation the company would reimburse itself in the same way. 
A business is carried no further than it pays, and pays as well 
as other business in reach. Moreover, high grade men would 
be taken from their own proper work and put into that of low 
grade men more deserving of aid ; and extra pay above market 
wages for the work done would not only be a charity dole to a 
favored few, but would tend to be well bought in the demoral- 
izing effort of scheming for jobs. 

Raising the Worker's Standard of Living. A writer in 
Municipal Affairs (winter 1902-3) says that the maintenance of 
a proper standard of living among quasi-public employees is as 
much a matter of public interest as guarding neighboring prop- 
erty, or as securing the safety of travelers. To this one must 
agree, especially if all other workers are included with the 

be hired, the unionists will get the work, both from the city and the con- 
tractor, without the ordinance. If there are enough of such non-unionists 
at lower pay, the unionists have no right to the work. So far as unionism 
rests on a right basis it can do the organizing itself, and does not need to 
get work or get members by a forcing process of unjust law. Similarly, 
eight-hour laws are desirable where they are directory, leaving officials some 
discretionary power to contract for other hours if advisable for the public, 
and where the pay and the efficiency make the short day just to taxpayers. 



Labor Laws. 541 

quasi-public ; but for maintaining the standard what is the state 
to do ? PubHc pay above market wages is as truly charity, and 
just as demoralizing (page 433), as is doling out relief to any 
whose wages are low. To raise the standard of life and charac- 
ter, and not to make it worse, the state can only protect the 
worker with a few laws as to hours and safety, and teach him 
to get better pay by earning it.^ 

The Right to Employ and to Discharge. Courts set aside 
in 1 901 Illinois and Wisconsin laws forbidding discharge, or 
refusal to employ, because of membership in a trade union. A 
similar statute had been set aside in 1895 in Missouri. In these 
laws, enacted in many states, and applying not only to public con- 
tractors but to all private employers, the effort among legislators 
to please working class voters was carried pretty far. In effect, 
the employer was even forbidden to prefer a force of non-union- 
ists, since in choosing them where a union exists he would be 
excluding others because of unionism. The Illinois court de- 
clared the law unconstitutional, not only because it granted a 
privilege to union men not granted to other workmen, thus 
denying the latter equal protection, but also because it deprived 

^The Eight-Hour Clause in the Tunnel Franchise of 1903, under which 
the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. will spend about $50,000,000 at New York — 
a clause fought for persistently by trade unionists but omitted at last on 
the company's determination not to build at all if it was inserted — was 
defended on the ground that the usual eight-hour rule in New York city 
building trades would be broken by bringing in outside men. The mayor, 
and members of the franchise board, relinquished the clause because the 
tunnel was to be a great inter-state work, not a local matter, and hence 
employment from a wide area was necessary to obtain enough men and to 
avoid monopoly wages. But if the work were simply local, do the building 
trades — already protected by the impossibility of doing their work elsewhere 
and shipping it in — need the additional protection of keeping away new 
men? In neither of these respects are other trades protected. Have local 
workers a right to high pay and short day advantages that are not so well 
balanced by higher quality and speed of work as to be no monopoly tax 
on persons having work done, and hence as not to require artificial protec- 
tion against inflow of outsiders? It is true that home people should have 
the work if they are about as desirable as others (page 243), but it is also 
true that to giving home workers due preference employers are sufficiently 
held by the local disfavor to be incurred by bringing in outsiders without 
good reason. 



542 Getting a Living. 

employers of liberty and property without due process of law. 
''Liberty includes not only the right to labor, but to refuse to 
labor, and consequently the right to contract to labor, or for 
labor, and to terminate such contracts, and to refuse to make 
such contracts. One citizen cannot be compelled to give em- 
ployment to another citizen, nor can any one be compelled to be 
employed against his will."^ The rights vehemently contended 
for by unionists, as to leaving employment at will, and as to 
involuntary servitude (see next chapter), imply corresponding 
rights with the employer as to discharge. Requiring one to 
pay wages to a man he did not want to hire would be depriving 
of property. The clause forbidding one to refuse to employ on 
account of unionism has been thought of as more obviously 
untenable than the clause forbidding discharge ; but the latter is 
practically the same as the former, since in work by the day 
each additional day involves at least a tacit renewal of contract. 
But the Employer's Rights in Buying Labor are Not Un- 
limited, and this is true apart from the settled restrictions of 
factory acts as to ages, sex, and hours. The statutes of many 
states prohibiting employers from attempting to influence the 
voting of employees, as they have done, by threats of discharge, 
by political matter printed on pay envelopes, or by placards 
indicating a suspension of work in case a certain party won an 
approaching election, — have not been contested, are obviously 
wholesome, and are probably necessary in some communities if 
political liberty is not to be practically destroyed. Also, to 
promise employment in order to influence one's vote is clearly a 
form of bribery, which, in direct forms at least, is illegal in all 
advanced countries. A Wyoming statute of 1893 prohibits any 
employer, on penalty of $100 fine, from requiring or demanding 

^U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 35. The New York Court of Appeals held 
in 1897 that an agreement between an association of employers and a 
union (page 211), that none but unionists shall be employed, is unlawful, 
though voluntarily entered into on each side. (Indus. Com. XVII. 569). 
Such a case seems different from that In which unionists may (when the 
object is to advance themselves and not to injure others) lawfully drive 
non-unionists from a trade by refusing to work with them (page 210). 
Then the combination is of unionists only, while in the other case it be- 
comes too formidable by including employers, who are required, usually 
against their will and without sufficient personal interest, to boycott non- 
unionists. 



Labor Laws. 543 

of an employee, on any condition whatever, the surrender of 
any social, political, moral, or religious right. It seems clear 
that our jealously guarded religious rights also, if employers 
were to make conditions concerning them, might constitutional- 
ly be protected as well as political rights ; and a similar view 
might be taken of the right to join a trade union, now admitted- 
ly essential to the existence of real liberty among the workmen 
of many large employers. It was probably because it simply 
prohibited attempts to influence by threat, that Ohio's law pro- 
tecting the right to join a union was upheld by a court of com- 
mon pleas.^ But to discharge a man because he had voted a 
certain way (forbidden by some of the statutes), or had joined 
a certain church, or did not trade at a certain store, would seem 
to be the employer's right if not connected with any kind of 
threat. There would then be no attempt to influence or coerce. 
As the Illinois judge said,^ an employer might say, "I am not 
employing union men," so it would seem he might lawfully say 
that he was not employing Democrats or Baptists. In the two 
latter cases, to avoid offending customers, he would not state 
the actual reason, having the right to keep the reason to him- 
self. Undoubtedly a large proportion of the people buy at 
certain stores, and stay away from others, on account of the 
proprietor's religion, or lack of it.^ Buying of the good is praised. 

^U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 26. The Florida law of 1901, forbidding an 
employer to require his men, on penalty of discharge, to trade at any par- 
ticular store, would be valid as an anti-truck act. But this law would 
seem also to be valid in the absence of a company store, since such con- 
duct would be an intolerable interference with private rights, though by 
employees, as by all others, patronage is often voluntarily placed with a 
view to gaining favor. 

^U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 35. In many cases it has generally been il- 
legal to coerce by threatening to do things that are lawful. By the 
common law, much striking, picketing, boycotting, and persuading of em- 
ployees to leave work, are allowable that it would be unlawful to threaten 
for the purpose of coercion, or to carry out by combination. (Stimson, 
smaller book, 93.) In a strike for the unlawful purpose of injuring the 
employer, or of forcing him to join in a boycott of a third party, not for the 
purpose of benefiting the strikers, it would be the combining, not the 
leaving, that might be punishable as conspiracy. If under time contract, 
the combining might be conspiracy even without the unlawful purpose of 
injury. (Stimson, Handbook, 35, 213.) 

3"It is a Part of Every Man's Civil Rights that he be left at liberty 



544 Getting a Living. 

However, despite what has just been said as to necessity of 
unionism, employers undoubtedly have, and sometimes exercise, 
a constitutional right to combine for their own advancement and 
in so doing to conquer or break up unionism by threats of dis- 
charge and of refusal to hire ;^ because unionism, unlike politics 

to refuse business relations with any person whomsoever, whether the 
refusal rests upon reason, or is the result of whim, caprice, prejudice, or 
malice. With his reasons neither the public nor third persons have any 
legal concern." (Cooley, Torts, Sec. 238. Quoted in a decision in Labor 
Bulletin No. 39, page 500.) 

"It is the right of every person, natural or artificial, to employ or refuse 
to employ whomsoever he may wish; and he can not be called upon 
to answer for his judgment in that regard by the public or individuals, nor 
can the motives which prompt his action be considered." (Ohio Supreme 
Court, Labor Bulletin No. 42, p. 1117.) 

These laws as to hiring unionists are the "clearest sort of interference 
with individual liberty, and cannot possibly come under the exception of 
the police power." In seeking "to impose such compulsion upon the em- 
ployer through the hand of the state, still more when so doing is made a 
crime, the law effecting this result, though passed by a majority, is none 
the less tyranny in a free country." (Stimson, Handbook, 182.) 
♦ ^In 1894 a high court of New York, in a case not appealed, held that a 
combination of employers has the right to lock out all members of a union 
because of demands deemed unjust. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 26, p. 21.) 
This was done in the British engineering trade in 1897, and in the Chicago 
building trades in 1900 (page 231). But this New York court's decision 
at the same time, that the unionists may use the boycott and persuade cus- 
tomers not to deal with the employers combined, has fallen before later and 
higher decisions. Their combining throughout the trade to strike balances 
the employers' combining to lock out. To balance the employees' boycott, 
the employers would have to resort to the blacklist, and induce outsiders not 
to hire them. 

Witnesses testified (Indus. Com. IV. 132) that the federal law of 1898, 
forbidding discrimination against railway unionists, is ignored by several 
companies — that on one system west of Chicago any employee found by its 
detectives to be a unionist is discharged. The brotherhood chiefs favor 
enforcement of this law, but prefer trusting to their unions rather than to 
a law regulating discharge. For burden placed on the company by such a 
law it would reimburse itself by keeping down wages and raising charges, 
besides taking care to hire none of unproved desirableness. For each 
worker who gained a net benefit in forced security of employment, there 
would be a dozen who lost in lessening of work and lowering of wages, 
besides the other public losses in checking business. (See discussion of 
compulsory arbitration, Chapters XXVII. and XXVIII.) 



Labor Laws. 545 

and religion, directly and aggressively affects their business 
interests, and because unionists continually exercise the right, 
when combining for their own advancement, to do all they can 
to conquer or break up opposing employers by threats of strik- 
ing and of refusal to begin work. A law forbidding discharge 
or refusal to employ because one was a Christian would arouse a 
tremendous hue and cry, especially among socialists and their 
many unionist followers ; yet the number in this country who 
disbelieve Christianity is doubtless many times smaller than the 
number who disbelieve unionism, and for opposing Christianity 
the employer in an occupation not immoral would not have the 
good reason of business interests. In fact, because of union- 
ism's aggression on his business, of the violence and unreason- 
ableness by which it is too often marked, and of the large body 
of opinion unfavorable to it, the employer would seem to have 
a right, by discharge or otherwise, to oppose unionism if he has 
a right to oppose anything. It is doubtless true that all these 
attempts by law to force unionism on employers have materially 
injured it, by turning the public mind away from its merits.^ 

Making Wage Workers a Privileged Class. As indicated 
in the preceding pages, many labor laws, which often are passed 
by legislators desiring to gain the favor of clamorous voters, are 
declared unconstitutional when they reach the supreme court. 
It is well that courts- check labor legislation until the need for it 
is clear to a public opinion prevailing among a large majority, 
and acting, outside of class influence, on the strict merits of the 
case. The general practice of giving claims for labor prefer- 
ence over other debts, and of exempting wages from attachment 
up to about $50 a month, or to a balance any time of about $25, 

^Unionism Has So Abused the Public Lenience that to a large extent the 
latter is now giving way to strictness. The employers' association of Kan- 
sas City, said to have a membership of nearly 8,000, is working for the repeal 
of that city's favors to unionism, including its eight-hour system as now en- 
forced, its letting of printing to union shops only, and its licensing of engi- 
neers by a board composed entirely of unionists. Despite obvious badness 
and unconstitutionality of these laws, the typographical union, in its demand 
that public school books bear its label, has lately succeeded in inducing the 
school book trust to unionize its plants, through a Montana law of 1903 re- 
quiring the school commission to contract for no books not bearing the union 
label. Trusts and unions are alike in scheming for illegal favors. A law 
favoring union printers was lately set aside at Nashville, Tenn. 
35 



54^ Getting a Living. 

together with many regulations for mines and factories, — are 
doubtless necessary to prevent hardship and injury. But there 
is need to guard against making wage earners a privileged class. 
It has become almost true that in a contract the laborer is held 
by law to nothing, while the other party is held to everything. 
In regard to nothing else but personal labor is one party free to 
keep a contract or not while the other party is held. The union- 
ized trades (few labor laws apply to farm and common work) 
might soon be drawn much further in their present tendency to 
claim monopoly rights, similar to those of the mediaeval guilds 
(page 305).^ For favors unnecessary to protect from wrong, 
nature will exact a costly return, not only from society but from 
the workers themselves. By no ingenuity in law (page 342), 
no more than by robbery on the highway, can one class, espe- 
cially the unshrewd workers, ever get a dollar in value from 
another class, beyond what is willingly accorded in exchange or 
is required by the highest welfare of all, that does not bring in 
some way upon the gaining class two dollars of loss. A work- 
er's proper safety in exemption of wages is a trifle when it 
leads him to run into debt, to lose credit, self-respect and indus- 
try, and to necessitate rise of price to consumers by adding to 
the risks of business, and by diminishing his life's production. 
For the trouble caused by such a worker, the merchant giving 
credit reimburses himself with usury, by m.eans of high prices 
and poor goods. The unreliability of such a worker adds to the 
burden -of all, and rarely is he shrewd enough to secure from his 
trickery a net gain for himself. Merchants giving good values 
have nothing to do with such a customer except on a cash basis. 
Needed regulations by law save labor power, increasing product 
and wages, but harassing restrictions, increasing the cost and 
trouble of carrying on business, soon bring wages lower, and 
lessen employment. 

(Stimson, smaller book, 27, 37.) Mr. Stimson, who is the leading 
authority on labor law, and who in an address in 1895 (not however in his 
larger book next year) took the workers' side on the question of injunctions, 
— shows how unfounded is the common and regrettable notion of trade 
unionists that the courts are against the working people. He says that 
legislatures and courts have gone far toward making the workers a priv- 
ileged class, while the public bears good-naturedlj' the most arbitrary action 
by them when they have a just grievance. 



Labor Laws. 547 

Laws on Every Side to Lean Upon will soon make a leaning 
people. Securing highest wages in public work by law, if not 
accompanied by a strict rendering of full market value, dis- 
credits unionism before the people, weakens their support in 
strikes, and tightens their caution in personal dealings with 
workmen. The reputation of a certain building trade for high 
charges, often jokingly exaggerated, causes many people to 
suffer inconvenience in order to do without its services. The 
typical worker of the highly paid building trades, many house- 
holders believe, smokes, drinks, and wastes time wantonly when 
sent out of the employer's sight, and consequently, in view of 
the charge by the hour, they dread to have him come on their 
premises. That this feeling materially reduces employment is 
not to be doubted. The laws of some states by which large 
preference in public work is given to old soldiers are doubtless 
intended not to gain votes but to reward deserts, yet very prob- 
ably they have a general effect to weaken the soldier's self- 
respecting efficiency, — to make him depend on favor instead of 
on rendering full value for his pay. So far as the laws have this 
effect, or as it is even suspected, they must narrow the soldier's 
chances in the far more important field of private employment. 
Few things are more carefully avoided, by the employer follow- 
ing business principles, from which not many depart far and 
survive, than hiring a man who feels that the world owes him 
unearned a part of his living. Each employer, not considering 
himself the world, tries to insure that the claim is not collected 
from him. The public favor to be gained by hiring those 
deemed to deserve help is likely to be outweighed by the risk 
that with the employer's treatment of them the public will not 
be satisfied (page 380). Hence, many employers take the safe 
course of having nothing to do with them. Extra favors de- 
served are likely to come in largest measure nowadays, not to 
the worker who is active to claim them, but to the worker who 
shows cheerful willingness to earn his way. 



CHAPTER XX. 
THE INJUNCTION IN LABOR DISPUTES. 

" Government by Injunction " is a term of reproach applied 
by trade unionists in the United States to the practice by judges 
of granting injunctions to restrain strikers and labor organizers 
from committing various acts in trade disputes. The term be- 
came prominent between 1890 and 1895, in connection with a 
number of railway strikes, though the first use of injunctions in 
labor disputes had taken place as long before as 1868 in Eng- 
land (the first one being issued to stop a boycott), and they had 
occasionally been issued meanwhile in both countries. The prom- 
inence of this use of injunctions arose chiefly from the fact that 
in construing and enforcing the Inter-State Commerce Act of 
1887, and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, the ordinary 
methods of strikers were mainly forbidden by courts to em- 
ployees of railroads. In 1893 the issuing of orders by Chief 
Arthur of the engineers' brotherhood, to enforce its rule that 
engineers of one road (the Lake Shore) should refuse to haul 
cars of another road struck against (the Ann Arbor), was re- 
strained by Judge Taft with an injunction (commanding Arthur 
not to order a strike and to rescind a boycott order already 
given) on the previously usual ground (i) that such boycotting 
and the conspiracy back of it — actionable for damages and some- 
times criminal — inflicted on the railway company's business and 
property, and also on the public, a damage serious, continuing, 
and irreparable; and also on the additional ground (2) that the 
Inter-State Commerce Law, which makes it criminal for one 
railway company to refuse to handle the cars of another, applies 
to a company's employees as well as to its officials. In the great 
strike of 1894, on different railways extending from Chicago, 
injunctions to restrain E. V. Debs and his associates were issued 
on the ground (3) that their American Railway Union was a 
combination in restraint of inter-state trade, and hence was in 
violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, w^hich, for the pro- 

(548) 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 549 

tection of the public, expressly authorized restraint by injunc- 
tion. This act was designed for combinations of employers and 
dealers, but a clause excepting labor unions, though brought 
before a congressional committee, was not inserted, and would 
have made the act unconstitutional. Another ground for the 
Chicago injunctions of 1894, apart from the authority conferred 
by the federal laws mentioned, was (4) the federal govern- 
ment's constitutional powers and duties in the care of inter- 
state trade, upon whose unbroken continuance depends the wel- 
fare of millions of people. Still another basis for the Chicago 
injunctions was (5) a law of Congress against interference with 
passage of the mails. For conspiracy to obstruct the mails a 
Railway Union official in California was imprisoned for eighteen 
months. The 1894 injunctions, issued in most of the large 
cities west of the AUeghanies, were not usually granted to rail- 
way companies, but were sued out by the Attorney General of 
the United States, to protect the public under these various 
laws. One purpose of the federal court's injunctions in the 
Coeur d'Alene mine riot of 1892 in Idaho, suppressed by federal 
troops as were the Chicago railway riots of 1894, was to protect 
public rights and peace. The noted injunction of Judge Jen- 
kins in 1893, to restrain Northern Pacific employees, was mainly 
based on the ground (6) that as the railway was in the hands of 
the court's receiver, the court had special powers and duties to 
protect its business ; and on the ground that incitement of the 
employees of a receiver to strike, though no injunction had been 
issued, was a contempt of court, a labor organizer named 
Phelan was sentenced in 1894 by a federal court at Cincinnati to 
six months' imprisonment.^ 

^The court stated, however, that if, to resist reduction In the wages of the 
receiver's employees themselves, Phelan had peaceably induced them to 
strike, he would not have been liable to contempt, even though the road's op- 
eration had been seriously impeded, but that the unlawfulness of his act was 
the purpose to boycott Pullman, by forcing the receiver to cease dealing 
with him. Intimidation as the dividing line between lawful and unlawful 
interference with a receiver's employees was stated in a Colorado case in 
1885, and in the great strike on the Texas and Pacific in 1886. On the 
ground of receivership, without injunction, some men of an Indiana mob in 
1877 were punished for contempt in obstructing trains, and two Wabash 
strike leaders for the same offense in 1885. (U. S. Report on Strikes, 1901, 
p. 952.) 



550 Getting a Living. 

Opposition by Organized Workmen to Use of Injunctions 

has been strenuous. Agitation for this purpose was recom- 
mended by the American Federation of Labor as a leading 
effort of trade unionists during 1902. At some places an ''in- 
junction day" was observed. Steps were taken not long ago at 
Chicago by unionists to form an anti-injunction society, to raise 
money for defending strikers involved in injunction cases, and 
to agitate for anti-injunction legislation, which for some years 
has been sought from Congress and from different state legisla- 
tures. The injunction is one of the main subjects of discussion 
in unionist periodicals and speeches. 

The Fine or Imprisonment Without Trial by Jury, which a 
judge has the power to impose for contempt on one who dis- 
obeys an injunction, is the chief reason offered by unionists for 
their opposition. They say that while the judge ostensibly 
punishes for the contempt, he really punishes in many cases for 
a crime, and, by the settled rules of procedure, the accused is 
deprived not only of the cherished right of trial by jury, but also 
of the rights to summon witnesses in his behalf, to be con- 
fronted by the witnesses against him, and to have the benefit of 
the various delays and safeguards of criminal trials. But the 
reply of the courts to this seems conclusive. The single act en- 
joined is two offenses : the one is the contempt in disobeying the 
injunction, to which alone the punishment by the judge applies ; 
the other is the crime against the laws, in the trial of which, if 
the accused is prosecuted, he has the benefit of trial by jury, and 
of his various other rights in criminal proceedings. That the 
act committed is also a crime against the state, as well as an 
unlawful injury to the employer's property and a contempt of 
court, seems to add to the justification of the punishment im- 
posed by the judge, since in labor disputes there is rarely a 
prosecution for the crime, and much more rarely a conviction. 
Dependence is placed, it is alleged, on the extraordinary process 
of injunction, instead of on the regular criminal procedure, 
because for contempt the judge punishes quickly and arbitrarily, 
and is disposed to favor the employer, while in criminal trials 
the jury follows the slow process found essential to preserve 
liberties, and is disposed to favor the worker. A conclusive 
reply to this, it seems, is that the judge's action is justified in 
his protection of the property, which, by reason of the strikers' 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 551 

financial irresponsibility, is wholly unprotected otherwise. The 
offenders can still have their trial by jury if the public prose- 
cutor enforces the law well enough to proceed against them for 
crime. The judge's action is fully supported on grounds that 
can be utilized in no other way ; and the fact that the injunction, 
in addition to fulfilling its own function of protecting property, 
has also some effect to remedy the neglect of officials to enforce 
the criminal law, is not to be deprecated as usurpation, but is a 
public advantage.^ 

*An Authoritative Statement of the Law of Injunctions was made 

in 1895 by the Supreme Court of Missouri {Labor Bulletin No. 4). Counsel 
for the strikers admitted, and even quoted a statute to show, that they were 
committing a crime in attempting, with threats of personal violence, to 
force about five hundred women, girls, and young persons to leave a shoe 
factory, but contended that for the crime they could only be tried by jury 
in a criminal case. This line of thought, the court replied, would lead to 
the end that the Constitution guaranteed every man a right to commit crime, 
so that he might enjoy the inestimable right of trial by jury. A court of 
equity will not interfere by injunction, the court said, to prevent commis- 
sion of a crime, but when the crime involves also irreparable injury to 
property an injunction will be issued to prevent the latter, though the 
crime may be incidentally prevented also. Equity will not interfere when 
there is adequate remedy at law, but the damage to the shoe factory's 
business could not well be estimated, and from the strikers could not be 
recovered, because of the necessary multiplicity of suits and of their lack 
of property to be attached. 

Plenty of Opportunities for Trial by Jury are often left after the 
punishment for contempt. Of Arkansas coal mine strikers who in 1899, 
as avowed in threats, combined and armed themselves with deadly weapons 
to openly attack the officers of the United States in the discharge of their 
duties, the judge said: "These defendants were guilty of false imprison- 
ment every time they detained by force, arrested, or guarded a man on that 
day; they are subject to indictment for robbery or larceny for each gun 
they took from the negro miners; subject to indictment for criminal con- 
spiracy; subject to prosecution for assault and battery, for disturbing the 
peace, for riot, and other misdemeanors; and a number of them are subject 
to prosecution for perjury in this court." Of the defence of ten strike leaders 
arraigned for contempt, a defence apparently typical in such cases, the 
judge said: "Summed up, it presents a sickening, disgusting, palpably 
false, and utterly insufficient defence, at once both shameless and shameful. 
If this court should accept their testimony as true, it would at once forfeit 
the respect of all honest men, and become t'.ie object of ridicule and con- 
tempt by these defendants, and would rightly deserve to be regarded by 



552 Getting a Living. 

That Injunctions Involve a Dangerous Exercise of Power 

is asserted and dwelt upon eloquently by trade unionists, by a 
few writers among lawyers/ and by many newspaper editors, 
the apparent purpose of the latter being to defend and \vin the 
favor of unionists rather than to study the matter without bias. 
But to a disinterested third party it would seem that the public 
risk in unjust punishment of strikers without jury trial is a 
trivial matter compared with the public risk in criminal violence 
to non-union men, and in unlawful injury to the employer's 
trade and propert}^ — all to go practically unpunished if left to 
ordinary criminal prosecution, and none of the strikers having 
property to be taken by suit for damages. To the people as a 
whole, government by injunction is surely preferable to govern- 
ment by mobs. In a large strike it is not uncommon for a half 
dozen men to be killed, dozens or scores of them beaten, prop- 
erty and business unlawfully damaged to the amount of perhaps 
millions of dollars, and large sections of the comimunity terror- 
ized. On the other hand, now and then several strikers, for 
contempt, are fined without trial by jury, or sentenced to a few 
weeks or months of imprisonment, afterwards to be honored by 
their fellows as martyrs or sufferers for the cause. In these 
days of general laxity in criminal punishment, when so many 
guilty escape, in the tendency to lose liberty through unbridled 
license instead of saving it through proper restriction, and in 
the present influence of organized labor over opinion and poli- 
tics, — under these conditions it is absurd to say that in issuing 
injunctions (at least with the restrictions recommended below) 
there is serious danger to the rights and liberties of workmen ; 
but such is often momentously true as to the rights and liberties 
of others who happen to stand in the strikers' way. Where 
properly issued, as it usually is, it is not the injunction that is 
a menace to constitutional liberty, but the lawlessness, which 
comes first and makes the injunction necessary for liberty's 
preservation. 

A Proof of Strength in American Institutions— an encour- 
aging assurance that they are to be sufficient for present and 
future emergencies, as they were for those involved in the Civil 

them as its injunction has been treated by them, with contempt, contumely 
and defiance. {Labor Bulletin No. 25.) 

^See Industrial Commission's Reports, XVII. 611. 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 553 

War — is what the unbiased patriot must eventually see, it would 
seem, in the use of injunctions in labor disputes, despite the mis- 
takes some judges have made. That this use is new is no ob- 
jection, but on the contrary a welcome proof of adequate reserve 
power in government. It was for new emergencies, not pro- 
vided for in the ordinary laws, and involving serious injustice 
if these laws were depended on, that injunctions came into use 
in England five or six centuries ago, and that they have been 
resorted to ever since, and that their use was continued un- 
changed by the American Constitution of 1789. It was only 
lately that strike conditions reached the stage in which injunc- 
tions are needed ; and it is a reason for their use in strikes, 
rather than an objection against it, to point out that in their 
other uses the property injury enjoined does not bear the extra 
weight of being also a crime. Injunctions have been issued less 
frequently in England than in this country, but boycotting and 
strike violence have been less frequent there also, and officers 
of the peace there have better performed their duties. In the 
Tafif Vale case of 1901 intimidation by a crowd in picketing 
was stopped by injunction, as doubtless it would have been in 
America. 

To the Imperishable Honor Won by Chief Justice Marshall 
and his associates, by so construing the Constitution as to make 
the young government a success, and not a failure, will be added 
in history the honor deserved by the courts of to-day for their 
courageous efficiency in preserving the institutions committed 
to their care. Public censure of the high courts is far less in- 
fluential to-day than it was in the time of John Marshall. And 
the mistakes and bias of present courts, in making some injunc- 
tions one-sided and too sweeping, as discussed in the para- 
graphs below, do not seem greater than ought to be expect- 
ed in adapting the law to new conditions. In adapting and 
interpreting the law, developing it according to public condi- 
tions and needs, courts are not, as has been charged, changing 
the government by insidious encroachment, but are simply ful- 
filling an acknowledged and necessary function. The fact that 
the infamous secret Court of Star Chamber, used by Charles I. 
to suppress liberties, punished with the same kind of power as 
that used then, before, and ever since by ordinary courts in 
punishing for contempt, is no more of an argument against con- 



554 Getting a Living. 

tinuing this power in the latter than the use of the army to 
intimidate the Roman Senate, and the abuse of power in all ages 
by kings and officers, great and small, would be arguments for 
having no army at all, or for giving no power to the President. 
It is just because the rights of free speech and trial by jury were 
won only by centuries of struggle, that injunctions are now 
used, where other methods fail, to preserve the inalienable rights 
of liberty and pursuit of happiness (also won by centuries of 
struggle) against destruction by mobs and boycotting conspir- 
acies. To be free from boycotting tyranny and strike terror- 
ism, while yet welcoming as now necessary large industries and 
trade unionism, is an inestimable right that is being struggled 
for now, and against an opposition that must be viewed very 
superficially to appear patriotic.^ 

^Tests in Which the Courts Were Not Found Wanting. One test was 
the contention of unionist counsel that by settled rules of equity an in- 
junction cannot be issued to prevent commission of a crime. The answer 
to this has been given above. 

Another test was the contention that by the rules each person enjoined 
must be named and served with notice individually, and that hence there 
was illegality in the many "blanket" injunctions of 1894 and since, ad- 
dressed not only to a few leaders named, but to their abettors and to "all 
persons whomsoever," notice being given by conspicuous posting and by 
newspaper publication. The reply was that impracticability of getting 
names, and of individual service, justified such notification in this case, 
as in the many other cases in which general publication is the means of 
giving legal notice. Only those are bound by the injunction who actually 
know of it, however the knowledge comes. In issuing a blanket in- 
junction the judge is not legislating by usurpation, as is claimed, nor 
making an executive proclamation, since those concerned are a com- 
paratively small and very definite group, who, without the injunction, defy 
the ordinary laws with impunity. 

A third test was the contention that injunctions could be issued to pro- 
tect property only, and that of none but private parties, but could not be 
issued in favor of the government, as was done in the railway strike of 
1894. The reply was that the government has a property Interest in the 
mails, and that besides it deserves credit instead of blame for stopping 
violence peaceably through the courts, instead of applying at once the harsh 
and final remedy of suppression with bayonets. These and other con- 
tentions were settled in the Debs case by the court of last resort, the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and in none of these important points, 
it seems, did any of the justices dissent. Similarly the New York Supreme 
Court has said that for all concerned it Is better to have law breaking re- 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 555 

To Make Lawful Anything Short of Actual Violence by 

strikers, and also to make violence itself practicable to resort to 
without much risk of punishment, must be the real object of 
unionist opposition to ordinary injunctions, as by the only 
reasonable conclusions such is the object of the vehement oppo- 
sition to calling out the militia (pages 214, 240). Even though 
violent acts are not committed, strikers get the benefit of them 
so far as their easy practicability results in scaring non-unionists 
away.^ The resentment aroused among unionists in 1893 by 

strained in time by a court, in which parties can be heard, than to let it 
continue until by calling out troops force must meet force. 

A fourth and very important test was the action of the Virginia Supreme 
Court in 1899 in declaring unconstitutional a statute requiring for con- 
tempt the usual jury trial when the act enjoined was a crime, unless the 
contempt was committed in the court's presence, or consisted of threaten- 
ing or resisting a court officer. Practically none of the contempts in labor 
disputes are of this direct class. The ground of the Virginia decision 
was that the people, by the Constitution, created separate and distinct, 
not only the executive and the legislature but also the courts, and gave 
the latter all the power of self-preservation they had exercised for cen- 
turies; and hence, that as the legislature did not give these powers, it 
cannot take them away. Statutes similar to this one declared void have 
been proposed in Congress, and in the legislatures of different states. 

From a standpoint of disinterested public spirit, one must accord ad- 
miration to the courts, and to American institutions, for these and other 
proofs that there is to be no evasion or nullification by what at best seems 
only quibbling, but that instead there is to be a full adequacy of power 
and action for all requirements. (See Indus. Com. Reports, Vol. XVII., 
for the arguments on both sides.) 

^When in 1902 the anti-injunction bill, passed by the lower house of 
Congress, was so amended by the Senate as to except acts involving danger 
to life or property, labor leaders, it is said, wrote privately to Senators 
that such an amendment would destroy the value of the proposed law. 
{The Nation, April 23, 1903.) 

The Wide License Desired in Picketing. To the claim that the 
meaning of the word intimidation, in the Pennsylvania statute, permits 
anything short of actual violence, the supreme court said in 1897: "This 
is a most serious misconception. The arguments, and persuasion, and ap- 
peals, of a hostile and demonstrative mob have a potency over men of 
ordinary nerve which far exceeds the limits of lawfulness. This display 
of force, though none is actually used, is Intimidation, and as much unlaw- 
ful as violence itself." [Labor Bulletin No. 26, p. 33.) 

"Conceding that a number of strikers could remain in the vicinity to see 
what was going on, yet when the number became a crowd, and when the 



55^ Getting a Living. 

Judge Jenkins's assertion that "no strike can be effective with- 
out compulsion and force," must have arisen from the element 
of truth in his assertion, since, if it had been wholly and clearly 
untrue, denial would have been unnecessary, and excitement 
over the matter unlikely.^ 

acts expanded into occasional attacks on property, and abusive language 
toward employees, and interference with those seeking to enter the yard, 
the 'guard' became a coercive instrument. A permanent guard in a 
public street in front of a factory is in itself a nuisance." {Labor Bulletin 
No. 31, p. 1290.) 

"But when persuasion took the form of the multitudinous camp and 
the gun and the pistol and the armed force, it entitled the complainant to 
his lawful remedies, quite as much, to say the least, as picketing or 
besetting, which are held to be a nuisance, and suppressible as such.... 
If this court cannot protect the rights of a citizen in a case like this, there 
is a decrepitude in judicial power which would be mortifying to every 
thoughtful man." {Labor Bulletin No. 41, p. 858.) 

^No Hardship from the Injunction. "The jurisdiction of a court 
of equity to restrain the defendants is too well established to be called 

in question by any one familiar with the decisions To grant an 

Injunction will work no hardship, nor even hamper the actions of any law- 
abiding person. Indeed, no one without a purpose to commit an unlawful 
act would be affected thereby. It is the undoubted right of workmen to 
quit severally or in a body, so long as the act does not come within the 
rule against conspiracies to injure the property of another. They may 
also use peaceable means in persuading others to join them in carrying 

out the strike A man may hold himself to certain rules, but he cannot 

impose those rules upon the conduct of any other man, against his wish, 
any more than he can place fetters upon his hands or shackles upon his 
feet. ' And when, as in the case at bar, the attempt is made, through in- 
timidation and acts of violence, to effect this end, it is tyranny of the most 
despotic character; it is civil war; it is treason to the principles of this 
and almost every other government. It v^^Ill not be tolerated." (Quoted 
from a United States circuit judge in Illinois. Labor Bulletin No. 38, 
page 184.) 

Enforcement by Strikers of Their Own Injunctions. In granting 
an injunction in 1901 a federal circuit judge in Ohio said: "It would not 
be urged for a moment that this union could rightfully have obtained 
from any court the injunction against the employer, and the non-union 
men, which in this strike the union has attempted to enforce. If courts 
should exercise great care in issuing injunctions, it follows with more force 
that a self-constituted body of men, deriving no authority from recognized 
law, should not be permitted to originate edicts for the government of 
others, and attempt to enforce them by any means whatsoever." {Labor 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 557 

Questionable Injunctions— Strikes of Railway Men For- 
bidden. But the opposition to use of injunctions is far from 
being on a level with the opposition to use of the militia. Some 

Bulletin No. 40, page 640.) A short time before a federal circuit judge 

in Ohio said: "The right to work as one pleases is a right not so 

much of property as of liberty which not even state legislatures can 

impair, and certainly not strike organizations." (Indus. Com. XVII. 578.) 

A Judge Taking the Unionist's View. The judge of the circuit 
court of a Kentucky county denied in 1901 an injunction against striking 
plumbers, who persisted in using violence to stop the employer from carry- 
ing on his business, publishing him as unfair, assaulting and threatening 
to beat him and his non-union workmen, and bringing his business to 
imminent ruin. The judge's reasons for the denial were that the remedy 
for the oflFences was the state's criminal law, and that for a judge to enjoin 
and punish for contempt was a dangerous exercise of power. {Labor 
Bulletin No. 37, page 1203.) Denial of injunctions for such reasons is 
what unionists desire. Few cases of denial for these reasons have occurred. 
This case from a lower court of a state (one of the courts that as a 
rule are closely under the influence of local voters), is the only one yet 
reported in U. S. Labor Bulletin, which has contained many cases of views 
similar to those quoted in the preceding paragraphs — from state supreme 
courts elected by the whole state for long terms, and from United States 
courts appointed by the President for life, and hence in position to judge 
a case independently on its merits. No doubt the state criminal law ought 
to be a sufficient remedy, as strikers, by obeying the laws everywhere, 
ought now to make injunctions unnecessary and thus settle the whole ques- 
tion. But where injunctions are issued, the state criminal law, by reason 
of delays and of non-enforcement caused by the unionists themselves, is 
virtually non-existent for the needs of the case, while in the absence of vio- 
lence the ruining of a business by the conspiracy of boycotting Is not as 
a rule sufficiently criminal to lead to arrest, and damages from strikers 
are practically never to be obtained. Sometimes the local government Is 
partly composed of and altogether dominated by strikers or unionists, and of- 
ficers are careful not to see, or to justify, violence and weapon carrying on 
the strikers' side, but are eager to arrest men on the employer's side for carry- 
ing weapons, and for a use of them that is prejudged to be aggression and 
not defence. Under such conditions, without an injunction there is no 
remedy at all, and strikers can carry their point by violent coercion, tramp- 
ling with impunity upon the property and personal rights of employers, 
non-unionists, and the general public. "If Indeed courts of equity did not 
Interfere In cases of this sort [trespass involving irreparable damage], there 
would, as has been truly said, be a great failure of justice in this country." 
(Justice Story.) 

Another Judge Favoring the Union. In 1902 Justice Gaynor, of the 
New York supreme court, denied an Injunction to a firm of bookbinders, 



558 Getting a Living. 

injunctions cover so many acts as practically to prevent strik- 
ing. In Judge Jenkins's injunction of 1893, Northern Pacific 
employees were forbidden not only to conspire, but even to quit 

but said the strikers should be careful to break no law. He said that no 
violence had been done; that the employers, it seemed, had caused the 
trouble by posting a refusal to recognize the union, and that "wiser 
employers have learned that it is convenient and useful to recognize unions 
and deal with them." But the appellate court unanimously granted an 
injunction against everything unlawful, because, though the only violence 
had been the pulling of a man across the street, there was much intimi- 
dation, in threatening to "do" and "fix" the non-unionists, to lay for them 
and blow their brains out, etc. (A^^. Y. Labor Bulletin, No. 14.) Surely, 
it might be wise in the employer to recognize a union if such trouble was 
to be the alternative, but hardly wise for the state to permit such holding 
up to secure agreements. 

In the Dissenting Opinion of TJ. S. Circuit Judge Caldwell in 1897 
(83 Fed. Rep. 912), against issuing the injunction that restrained a Kansas 
City union from boycotting a firm using machines to hoop barrels (page 
222), he made at length the usual and untenable contention (page 550) as 
to taking crimes from the jury by turning them into contempts. The 
statement of the complainants, that the boycotters were men of small means, 
he referred to with indications of a departure from the matter of a justice 
that knows no class, and of appeal to the common prejudice In favor of 
the poor in law suits. This fact of small means, making damage suits 
useless, was a reason for the injunction. The fact that unions have 
achieved so much in uplifting the workers is a reason why they do not 
need, and why by injunction they should be denied, resort to law break- 
ing In the boycott and in violence, which only lately have come into use, 
and which result only in net injury to their cause. And the fact that labor, 
in the words of Lincoln, deserves more consideration than capital, is a 
reason why law breaking should unfailingly be suppressed, and by in- 
junction prevented, since if the conspiracy of the boycott is to be permitted 
the workers will soon be brought to abject submission by employers united 
in blacklisting, and in refusal to hire unionists or buy goods they have made. 

The Workers Favored "by the Law as to Combinations. In Judge 
Caldwell's assertion that only that boycotting done by the workers Is resist- 
ed as unlawful, not that done by the trusts, he overlooked the many statutes 
(upheld by courts) against the practices by which trusts attempt to destroy 
competition, instead of honestly meeting it; and he overlooked also the 
case in which the manufacturers' boycott of the Dueber "Watch Co. was held 
to be unlawful. In 1898 the highest court of Illinois affirmed an award 
of $6,000 damages against officers of an association of laundry proprietors, 
which by the usual persuasion and threats of the boycott attempted to 
drive out of business a woman laundry agent who refused to raise her 
prices. In 1901 such an award was upheld in Wisconsin against a livery 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 559 

work, with or without notice, regardless of conspiracy, in such 
a way as to cripple the property or hinder its operation. If 
this injunction had been strictly enforced it would not only have 
prevented collective striking, but might have necessitated invol- 
untary servitude, forbidden by the Constitution, since not many 

proprietors' combination that resorted to ruthless breaking in upon funerals 
served by non-members. On the contrary, and not considering the uncon- 
stitutional exception of laborers in anti-trust laws, it is the side of the 
workers that is favored. To advance their own interests they may and 
do freely combine with eveiy worker they can win, and may and do drive 
non-unionists from the trade by refusing to work with them. In their 
boycott of an employer of non-unionists they may appeal to the public, may 
actively urge those in the trades directly concerned, and do not break the 
law until their urging, with the implied threat that is the effective ele- 
ment, is carried to the outside public. But the employers in a trust would 
not dare (for fear of buyers' disfavor and of law enforcement) to openly 
injure a competitor by unreasonable rebates or by refusal to sell to persons 
buying of him ; while a trust directly attacking a competitor, as workers 
do in a boycott extended to the outside public, would at once be re- 
strained by injunction, as would also be a boycott or blacklist conspiracy 
among employers to break up unions. The present tendency, of courts not 
less than of legislatures, is to permit unionists, in their hounding of an 
obnoxious man from the trade, to go to the last limit of reason in desire 
to benefit themselves and in absence of desire to injure him (page 209). 
But on the contrary, the tendency of courts, now as heretofore, is to hold 
trusts to the minimum of attack on others. A trust would not dare (for 
fear of injunction, damage suit, law enforcement, or public disfavor) to 
mention competitors or trade unions by name in an attack on them, as 
unions openly attack by name in boycotting. Courts universally uphold 
the right of workers to combine to secure a price for labor, but have 
almost universally held it to be unlawful for employers to agree thus on a 
price for goods. (Stimson, 182.) 

The Unanimity of Courts in Favor of Injunctions. This one of Judge 
Caldwell is the only dissenting opinion, in a boycott or injunction case, that 
has been published in U. S. Labor Bulletin (bi-monthly, established 1895). 
The practice in this journal, as in the state labor departments generally, 
is to be carefully considerate toward trade unionism. Other cases of denial 
or dissent in injunction matters before supreme courts are mentioned on 
pages 563, 572. No other such cases have come under the notice of the 
author of this book, nor are any other such cases given by the Industrial 
Commission. In view of Judge Caldwell's failure to see in the boycott 
the active urging (with the underlying threat) of third parties, and of his 
failure to view the injunction as a property remedy leaving trial by jury 
unaffected, it is not surprising that in his position on these questions he has 
stood virtually alone among judges of high courts. 



560 Getting a Living, 

men could have quit even individually without hindering the 
road's operation. But ten months later Justice Harlan, of the 
circuit court of appeals, modified this injunction, and declared 
that although a strike of raiKvay men involved special disaster 
to the public, there could be no prohibition of the right to quit 
work, even though the quitting were done with reckless disre- 
gard of contracts and of public interests. In the earlier case of 
1893 Judge Taft declared that the injunction, requiring Lake 
Shore employees to handle Ann Arbor cars, could be escaped 
by quitting the employment; that under some circumstances 
quitting might be criminal or actionable, by reason of endan- 
gering life or property, but could not be prohibited by injunc- 
tion. The quitting, however, was to be in good faith and un- 
conditional, not a mere temporary cessation of work, as by a 
striker, in expectation of an order to go on without the cars. 
For such a cessation for five hours, accompanied by the declara- 
tion *'I quit," the engineer Lennon was fined $50 and costs for 
contempt of court. The strongest statement of the doctrine 
that by injunction railway employees may be compelled to per- 
form their usual duties so long as they remain in the service, 
was made by Judge Ross in a case of the Southern California 
Railway in 1894, his grounds being that by refusal the em- 
ployees subjected the company to great damages, and also in- 
terrupted the mails and inter-state commerce. Both quitting 
and conspiracy to quit, only the latter of which acts is criminal 
or actionable when done to injure the employer or non-unionists 
(pages 209-12), were held by Judge Taft to be criminal when, 
by refusal of employees to handle cars, a railway company was 
forced into the crime of violating the Inter-State Commerce 
Act.^ Under this act and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, an 

^Where Merely Quitting Work is Unlawful. "Also, the Supreme Court 
of the United States seems to hold quite distinctly that the mere cessation of 
employment is illegal when it is in pursuance of a wide-reaching combination 
of railway employees to refuse to handle certain cars, with the design of 
so injuring the railways and the public as to lead them to bring influence 
to bear upon another person to carry out a particular line of action." 
(Indus. Com. XVII., page cxxi.) It must have been on this ground, and 
also because of the public injury and of the employer's being a receiver, 
that in May, 1903, a Denver court enjoined gas workers from going out on 
a sympathetic strike (page 233), though they had been excepted from the 
strike order by the general labor committee. But to the general rule that 



The IiijiDiction in Labor Disputes. 561 

extreme statement, perhaps not concurred in by many judges, 
was made by a federal judge in 1894 of the unlawfuhiess of 
strikes by railway men and telegraphers. He said that, owing 
to the dependence of the life and welfare of large sections of 
the people upon regular transmission of commodities, a strike 
or boycott will now be practically impossible among railway 
men without their violation of these two statutes. 

Recent Injunctions in Railway Strikes. Between 1894 and 
1903,^ though there were a number of strikes of railway shop- 
men, yardmen, and freight handlers, there were no strikes that 
so interrupted passage of trains as materially to injure the 
public, and no noteworthy injunctions in railway labor disputes. 
But in the spring of 1903, under the two inter-state commerce 
statutes mentioned, team drivers' unions were temporarily re- 
strained somewhat closely in regard to picketing and persua- 
sion in strikes at Kansas City and Omaha ; while the officials of 
the brotherhoods of firemen and trainmen were temporarily 
restrained from ordering or advising a strike on the Wabash 
system. These injunctions were based mainly on the serious- 
ness to the public of obstructing inter-state commerce. Judge 
Taft's injunction of 1893 against ordering a railway strike rest- 
ed at bottom, it seems, on the fact that the strike was a criminal 
boycott of another company's cars. Judge Jenkins's later in- 
junction against ordering or advising a railway strike was so 
modified by the higher court as apparently to permit such action 
by the brotherhood officials. The Debs injunction of 1894 pro- 
hibited peaceable persuasion of men to quit or to refuse to per- 
form their usual duties ; but it was doubtless based on the fact 
that the strike then was an unlawful boycott to force the Pull- 
man Company to grant its men's demands, besides being a 
widespread conspiracy dangerous to the public in obstructing 
commerce. 

not the quitting but the combining is the criminal act, the supreme court's 
position stated in the above quotation might not be an exception if the 
quitting were viewed as an element in and proof of the conspiracy of com- 
bining. 

^After the strikes of 1894. a number of states enacted laws making it a 
criminal offense, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for a railroad en- 
gineer, or other employee, to go on strike and leave a train, passenger or 
freight, at any other place than its appointed destination, or to refuse to 
handle the cars of other roads. (See the chapter on arbitration.) 
36 



502 Getting a Living. 

Injunctions Against Peaceable Persuasion in Other Than 
Railway Employment seem not to have been issued until re- 
cently in any of the states.^ In 1897 ^he Pennsylvania supreme 
court held that while acts of unionists not reaching the stage of 
force or intimidation were not criminal conspiracy, they might 
yet be prevented by injunction, because of the injury to the 
employer's business, and of the annoyance and loss of time with 
non-unionist workers persuaded. The court said specifically 
that there was no legal right (without liability for damages) to 
persuade to quit or not to employ, which doubtless was the 
common law rule everywhere, though not enforced for a half 
century, and fast being settled otherwise. But in this Pennsyl- 
vania case the persuasion was really intimidation. Recently, 
however, a number of injunctions have been issued to prevent 
peaceable persuasion under systematic picketing, and the order- 
ing or advising of strikes by union officials. A state court at 
Ansonia, Conn., in 1901, enjoined about two hundred striking 
machinists "from in any manner interfering with any person 
who may desire to enter the employ of the plaintiffs, by way 
of threats, persuasions, personal violence, or other means in- 
tended to prevent," etc. This was said to be the first injunction 
ever issued in a labor dispute in Connecticut. The injunction 
against the striking machinists of the Union Pacific shops at 
Omaha in 1902 forbade the formal picketing that had resulted 
in violence, and was regarded by the judge as inseparable from 
it. Judge Jackson at Parkersburg in 1901 enjoined outside 
organizers or officials of the miners' national union from coming 
in to work up and direct a strike among coal miners. In July 
of the next year he again enjoined outside organizers not to 
come in to stir up discontent, and six men who disobeyed he 
committed to jail for contempt. Another recent injunction of 
a federal court forbade indticing and unlazvfiil persnasion. 
(Indus. Com. XVII. 582.) In the cigar makers' strike 

^That is, excepting the earlier portion of the injunction-issuing period, 
between 1884 and 1893. One of the early injunctions, in a strike of cigar- 
makers at Binghamton, forbade not only peaceable picketing but also the 
giving of contributions to strikers. It was modified by a higher court. 
Numerous injunctions, including many that forbade "talking to one's 
neighbors," were mentioned by labor leaders before the Industrial Com- 
mission, but very indefinitely. 



The Injunciion in Labor Disputes. 563 

of 1900 Judge Freedman of New York city forbade by injunc- 
tion not only picketing of any kind, but also the payment of 
strike benefits to enable the strikers to remain out. But that 
part of the injunction relating to peaceable picketing and pay- 
ment of contributions was set aside by a higher court. Judge 
Keller's injunction of 1902 in a West Virginia coal strike was 
reported at first as forbidding payment of contributions, but 
this was a mistake.^ 

^Where an Injunction Cannot be Issued. A federal district judge in 
Tennessee said in 1901 that if "the assemblies at the entrances, and the un- 
ceasing surveillance, had been confined to obtaining information, and to 
unobjectionable social intercourse, for the purpose of begging and entreat- 
ing not to work, there could be no injunction." It was granted because of 
threats, abuse, and assaults. "The strikers cannot have, under the law 
of equal rights, a liberty of contracting as they please, and quitting when 
they please, which does not belong alike to the scabs and their employers. 
And it is this right the courts of equity enforce by injunction. The 
Supreme Court of the United States has established that as the law of this 
case." {Labor Bulletin No. 39, page 496.) 

In the Missouri case quoted from above the court said that the In- 
junction did not affect the strikers' rights — to quit work when they chose, 
wisely or unwisely, and to use fair persuasion, not force or threats, to 
induce others to join them in quitting. The law will protect workers In 
their right to leave, the court said, but will not permit them to destroy 
the right of others to remain. The strikers were their own masters, but 
not the masters of the other employees, nor even their guardians. 

An injunction from the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1896, stop- 
ping picketing that included "social pressure and threats of unlawful 
harm," was dissented from by Chief Justice Field, who thought the picket- 
ing might be unlawful, for interfering as it did with the emploj^er's business, 
but did not justify an injunction. Judge Holmes also, who dissented, ap- 
proved an injunction prohibiting use of force or threats, but was unwilling 
to prohibit picketing altogether. 

In a New Jersey injunction of 1901, confirmed by the supreme court, 
the judge said the persuasion by pickets must be such as those persuaded 
are willing to listen to. Different courts have enjoined ridicule and an- 
noyance. Enjoining strikers from visiting non-unionists in their homes is 
usually well founded, under the latter's fear of assault, and of the occasional 
blowing up of such homes with dynamite. 

"Picketing that annoys or intimidates new employees Is not allowable." 
"To stop another on the street, get in his road, foJIow him from one side 
of the street to the other, pursue him wherever he goes, is not persuasion." 
"Are not all the foregoing facts, supplemented with the brutal murder, 
evidence of intimidation and terrorizing?" "It is the syst'^m of picketing 



564 Getting a Living. 

The Legislation Needed for Limiting the Issue of Injunc- 
tions. Whether or not the pubHc can now afford to incur the 
grave risks and losses involved in permitting strikes among 
employees of railways will be discussed in Chapter XXVIIL in 
connection with compulsory arbitration. But in other occupa- 
tions, upon which the public welfare is less vitally dependent, it 
seems that the right of employees to strike, of a union to post a 
few pickets for giving information and for peaceable persua- 
sion, and of union officials to come among workers who want 
them and peaceably advise or direct a strike,^ — should be defi- 

that did it, and it is unlawful, and must be enjoined." (Judge Munger at 
Omaha in 1902. Labor Bulletin No. 47.) Yet he said, "If picketing is 
only done to obtain information, to reason with and peaceably persuade a 
fellow being to cease work, it is not unlawful." 

^The Right of Outside Organizers to Assist in a Strike. The Park- 
ersburg judge above mentioned, who said in connection with his 1902 
injunction that he did not recognize a right "to conspire to compel" the 
quitting of men not dissatisfied, merely to gratify a set of agitators fatten- 
ing on honest labor, — seemed to be still under the influence of old ideas 
that have almost passed away with the higher courts, though none of the 
courts recognize very far a right to conspire to compel. It is now nearly set- 
tled that as a body of employees combining and striking have a proper mo- 
tive in raising their own wages (page 209), so outside workers urging and 
assisting them have a proper motive in their entire trade's solidarity of 
interest, and are acting lawfully when the workers enticed are not bound 
by contract, and the persuasion is peaceable. It is hardly the law now, 
as it was ten years ago, that against an outsider enticing his men the em- 
ployer had a right to damages and to an injunction. Union organizers 
have often given way to extremes of zeal, as in this case the judge's self- 
control gave way to unjudicial language; but, to hold their positions and 
earn their modest salaries, they are no more under the necessity of raising 
wages and advancing the union by fomenting strikes, than they are under 
the necessity of preventing unreasonable demands and the consequent dis- 
aster to their cause. It is chiefly by active organizers that unionism is 
maintained ; and its necessity in large scale industry is admitted by prac- 
tically all economists, and in most cases by judges. 

But the Services of the Organizers Must be Wanted, and the workers 
must first be peaceably unionized far enough to strike willingly. In perhaps 
all the West Virginia injunction cases the eagerness of the United Mine 
Workers to add this state to their fully unionized territory has led them 
into intimidation and violence, so that those injunctions against all their 
interference, including peaceable persuasion in picketing, were probably 
justified. In these cases it seems that most of the men did not want to 
be unionized, and desired to remain at work if given protection from 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 565 

nitely settled by new statutes, at about the practice now gener- 
ally prevailing, which is set forth on page 212, and in the Ten- 
nessee and Missouri quotations in the preceding note. No de- 
tailed statute, defining what is lawful in picketing, has been 
enacted in America, the matter being left to the application by 
judges of general statutes and of the common law. Statutes 
are needed, in the states having large industries, because the 
courts, as shown in the increasing frequency of injunctions for- 
bidding peaceable advice and persuasion, are too often bound 
unduly by the views and predilections of the capitalistic class, 
to which by birth and association they belong, and hence are too 
slow in coming with the necessary unanimity to the view that 
is unquestionably to prevail — the view that is here recommend- 
ed, and that is now generally followed by high courts. While 
organizing a union and persuading men not to take strikers' 
places, may cause discord and loss in an employer's business, 
such action advances the interests of workmen, is engaged in 

violence. The organizers were trying to force unionism on these miners 
for the benefit, not mainly of the latter, but of union miners in other states. 
The moral right of a body of men to object to being unionized from the 
outside, by competitors desiring to take a share of their employer's work to 
other fields, is much stronger than the moral right of a few individuals 
to remain out of a local union already established (page 203). Debs ad- 
mitted in his testimony that the injunction is the only remedy against 
irresponsible agitators not wanted by the workers. 

Is the Employer Paying Low Wages an Unfair Competitor? This 
forced unionizing, apart from its law-breaking violence, is not justified 
by the claim that the competition of West Virginia coal operators 
is unfair toward those paying high wages in other states. Besides the 
usually correct claim of unionists, that with superior work their high wages 
are better earned than the low wages of non-unionists, it seems untrue 
that an operator paying low wages, any more than one having a rich 
mine, tries less than his competitors to get the highest price, or lowers price 
further than the necessary eifect of placing his quantity on the market. 
The advantage he has, in not being forced by low prices to close, the na- 
tional union may well remove, by peaceably convincing his men of their 
gain in higher pay, even at the risk of less work, and of their 
duty to unite with the general union of their trade; but there is no justifi- 
cation in morals, still less in law, for urging them any further than they 
are willing to listen. Hence, where the workers, as well as the employer, 
do not want the organizers, and are financially damaged by the disturb- 
ance 'fomented, it is right that the organisers should be kept away by 
injunction. 



566 Getting a Living. 

for that purpose, not for the employer's injury, results event- 
ually in the good of all concerned, especially when the employer 
cooperates reasonably, and is not to be prevented under the 
rights of free speech and of combination for lawful self-ad- 
vancement. The continued frequency of violent intimidation in 
strikes, which brought about the extended use of injunctions, 
and which has obscured to the public the justice and necessity 
of trades unionism, is now largely due to excusable resentment 
and desperation, aroused by what is taken to be stubborn and 
unreasonable refusal to consider the workingman's side of the 
question.^ Very little legislation will suffice. In Great Britain 

^The Just Objections of Unionists. Though an injunction is at first 
temporary, being issued to prevent loss by a questionable action until the 
rights in the case can be determined, when it is either vacated or made 
permanent, — the date of hearing is set some weeks or months in the future, 
and this delay, by making the strike abortive, may bring upon the workers 
the irreparable loss from which it is designed to protect the employer. If 
the workers are not guilty of intimidation, or of illegal boycotting, their 
loss then is grievously unjust. It seems true that corporations have too 
easily obtained injunctions for the asking, without apparent effort by the 
judge at first to learn the facts favorable to the workers. This was the 
tenor of testimony before the Industrial Commission by Prof. E. R. John- 
son, an expert on the subject, who is not biased in the worker's favor. 
Mr. Sargent, chief of the firemen's brotherhood, testified that the Northern 
Pacific injunction of 1893, forbidding a strike, was issued at the announce- 
ment by the receiver of a reduction of wages, in violation of contract, when 
striking had not been contemplated, but that the result of the attempt to 
force men to remain at work was a general strike which only the influence 
of brotherhood officials prevented from developing into an insurrection. 
(Vol. IV. 146; VII. 118.) In such use of injunctions the employer's guilt of 
unfairness and law breaking equals that of the workers when they resort to 
boycotting and violence. 

Unfair Advantage Taken Against Workers. The Union Pacific re- 
ceiver also, it was testified, obtained in 1894 an injunction in advance for 
a case of wage reduction like that of the Northern Pacific, with a similar 
result in modification by a higher court. The free issue of injunctions to 
restrain employees of railroads in the hands of receivers, with the hold- 
ing in a few instances of such employees for contempt without an injunc- 
tion, seems to be taking unfair advantage of them. Property remaining 
for many months in the hands of receivers, though the court's power is 
here exceptional, does not seem to need extraordinary protection above 
property in the hands of owners. It is a serious matter to have the mil- 
lions in the working class mistrust the courts, upon which the govern- 
ment's stability so largely depends, and more serious still when that 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 567 

(page 211) the statute of 1875 prescribes specifically what is 
unlawful in strikes. By judicial construction, in several of the 
American states, the question has been similarly settled. Un- 
der the statutes of New Jersey, as construed by the highest 
court, and to a less extent in New York, injunctions are not 
issued in strikes unless there is violence or intimidation. In 
New Jersey there is now alzvays liberty (not simply usually as 
in some other states) to engage in persuasion as earnest, and 
in combination as vigorous and widespread, as trade unionists 
could reasonably ask. A number of states have materially 
modified the common law of conspiracy. Maryland's statute 
of 1888, copying the British statute of 1875, permits combina- 
tion to do any act in a trade dispute that would not be unlawful 
if committed by one person alone. Minnesota's statute goes 
almost as far, as is now the case by decision under the statutes 
of New Jersey and New York. In 1902 the lower house of 
Congress, but not the Senate, passed a bill, for the territories 
and the District of Columbia, providing that combination in 
trade disputes should not be deemed criminal conspiracy, nor 
actionable, nor voidable, because in restraint of trade, nor be 
enjoined, when the acts committed would not be unlawful if 

mistrust is well founded. Labor injunctions, like emergency measures 
outside the realm of law, must be used very sparingly or they lose respect 
and efficiency. Frequent and unnecessary issue of injunctions (in which 
the court largely takes affairs out of the hands of the peace officers) brings 
contempt upon the ordinary criminal laws also, as being unworthy of de- 
pendence. The employer's hiring of armed deputies (deprecated by the 
coal strike commission) has the same effect, to belittle the law and its 
officers. Neither of these exceptional methods of protection should be 
granted to the employer unless positively necessary (by reason of property 
loss or official neglect) — that he may not incur local disfavor, that the 
workers may not be irritated, and that by showing confidence in the 
officers of the law they may be raised to the proper level of honor and 
efficiency. This, the policy on which the present unionist mayor of San 
Francisco was elected, and which he has followed in a strike by arresting 
the employer's unlawfully armed defenders but by arresting violent strikers 
also, will usually change warring factions into a law-abiding community. 
But the labor mayor of Bridgeport, in attempting lately to follow this 
policy, veered to one side, and brought contempt on himself by denying to 
the employers adequate police protection, and by apparently attempting 
to prevent the arrest of a striker throwing stones. The sheriff and police 
board took charge of affairs and restored order. 



5^8 Gettino- a Living. 



^ ^ ^.^...^. 



committed by one person alone. A similar bill, passing the 
Massachusetts house in 1902, was defeated by a senate vote of 
16 to II. California enacted such a law in 1903. Like the 
British law, these statutes define the acts that are unlawful for 
one, or except enough of the common law to prohibit a too act- 
ive boycotting, and strikes for malicious objects. 

The Court's Power to Punish for Contempt would doubt- 
less need no regulation by new statutes if a clear line were 
drawn beyond which injunctions could not be issued. Though 
on appeal from a punishment for contempt the high court's only 
power seems to be that of passing on the lower court's jurisdic- 
tion in the matter, there appears to be no danger that punish- 
ment will be excessive. By habeas corpus proceedings for the 
release of one imprisoned for questionable contempt, such cases 
are carried with success to higher courts, which also set aside 
or modify lower court injunctions unjustified or made too 
sweeping. These means of access to higher courts, the consti- 
tutional rules against excessive punishment, the provisions for 
impeaching and removing judges, and the restraining influence 
of public opinion, seem abundantly sufficient as safeguards 
against serious injustice in arbitrary punishment by courts in 
contempt cases.^ By the Virginia decision previously men- 

^Light Punishments Have Been the Rule in contempt cases, whatever 
may be said of the tendency of a judge to be prejudiced by the fact 
that a contempt is to him a personal affront. The punishment imposed 
for contempt on E. V. Debs was only six months imprisonment, yet he, in 
the words of W. H. Dunbar, the leading writer against use of injunctions, 
"was taken red-handed in flagrant and audacious defiance of the laws, and 
merited the most severe punishment which the penal statutes authorized." 
(Indus. Com. XVII. 615.) It seems well that in this case there was pun- 
ishment for the contempt at least, because the prosecution for crime resulted 
in failure to convict. In the American Federation's circular of 1902 
against use of injunctions the upward limit of imprisonment in the con- 
tempt cases complained of was given as nine months. Perhaps a typical 
case was one in 1901 at Chicago in which three men were imprisoned for 
four, ten, and fifty-eight days respectively. 

In 1897 the leaders of over 200 marchers, attempting to frighten into a 
strike the men of a mine from which few had been won, made light of an 
injunction restraining them from marching about the mine, which in- 
junction the officers even besought them to obey, explaining the wide room 
in which to urge the strike lawfully; but Judge Goff sentenced them to only 
three days imprisonment, warning them, however, that such mercy again 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 569 

tioned, a court's power to determine and punish contempt may 
be constitutionally regulated by the legislature, but may not be 
rendered ineffectual, and hence may not by it be transferred to 
a jury. Yet, as the judge has the right to do in any case in 
equity, he himself voluntarily, where conditions are favorable 
to justice, may well refer to a jury the questions of fact as to 
violation of an injunction, as Judge Chetlain did in a recent 
case in Chicago, and won thereby the special respect of union- 
ists. He said he believed such reference to a jury would go far 
toward relieving the courts from the suspicion and hostility of 
unionists, and that justice would in no way suffer, but would 
be protected and advanced. Such a spirit of confidence here, 
as in not hiring deputies, must have a good influence when the 
jurors and others concerned are in a mood to be worthy of it.^ 

would be not only a crime but the death of justice. {Labor Bulletin No. 
14, page 114.) 

Imposition by a United States court in Indiana of a fine of $250 on an 
outside organizer, for contempt in disregarding an injunction issued to 
local strikers, will be passed upon soon by the United States Supreme 
Court. A reason stated by the judge for declaring the act a contempt 
was that the organizer, coming to the locality, knew of the injunction, and 
for the purpose of thwarting it conspired with the local strikers, aiding 
and abetting them in their acts of violence. {Labor Bulletin No. 40, p. 
637.) A fine of $500 and costs, imposed lately on an editor for contempt by 
a Missouri supreme court judge, was said to be unjust. But the rarity of 
questionable fines for contempt indicates (what would now be the tempta- 
tion) that if judges are at fault it is in being over-lenient, and not suffi- 
ciently courageous. Lynching and general law-breaking indicate the same. 
^See American Federationist of March, 1902. The Industrial Commission 
(XIX. 882, 949) said: "It might be well to limit punishment for contempt to 
imprisonment for a brief period, . . . but it seems to be going too far to say 
that no contempt of the injunction shall be punished without all the delays 
and safeguards of an ordinary jury trial. Equity courts must not be de- 
prived of the power to protect themselves and make their decrees respected." 
Other recommendations of the Commission, in relation to injunctions, are 
about the same as those of this book. In recommending specific statutes 
as to picketing the Commission said: "The feeling that, under existing 
laws, legitimate acts are often punished, doubtless develops a spirit of 
opposition to the law which carries acts of strikers further than they would 
otherwise go." 

The Federal Courts. The demands of the mine workers, in their con- 
vention of 1903, are reasonable in their asking new laws to require proof in 
applying for an injunction, and to require an early time of hearing; but 



570 Getting a Living. 

The Reasonableness that Will Settle the Injunction Ques- 
tion requires not only (i) that courts conform their views to 
those which are destined to prevail, or (2) that these be im- 
posed on them by the public through legislation, and (3) that 
employers cease the effort to use injunctions unfairly, but also 
(4) that trade unionists cease prejudicing their case by claim- 
ing too much. They must accept a reasonable curtailment of 
free speech and of free combination, if they desire to silence 
their opponents' contention for freedom of contract, which of 
course has never existed, being restricted not only by unionism, 
but by public health and factory laws of many kinds. Neither 
has there ever been full freedom of speech. This freedom 
gives way everywhere in slander, in boycotting and blacklisting, 
and also in enticing employees to strike who are under time 
contract. There is insincerity and misrepresentation in the 
common complaint of unionists that injunctions forbid "talking 
to one's neighbors." Such talking has always been forbidden 
when it is unlawful, as in slander and blacklisting. Especially 
has it always been forbidden when, in order to make the neigh- 
bor give heed, he is knocked down and beaten, or is chased and 
surrounded by a hostile crowd. ^ Such a gathering is hardly 

legislative compliance seems hardly to be needed, under the nearness with 
which judges are now approaching exact justice, and in the wide room 
there Is for reform on the worker's side. It is well, however, that the mine 
workers' long list of radical demands — as to jury trial of contempts, ap- 
proval by two elective judges of every Injunction, etc. — would be unconsti- 
tutional by the Virginia decision. Especially Is It well that against the de- 
mand of the mine workers and of many labor writers, that Congress narrow 
the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and against their wish that federal 
judges could be elected for terms instead of appointed for life, — there Is a 
solid bar In explicit clauses of the Constitution itself, for whose amendment 
here it would be impossible to secure ratification by enough states. Of course, 
as Jefferson feared, the power of the federal courts would be dangerous if 
abused, but this power Is only the flaxen thread of centralization that must 
extend through the fabric of any government that is not to be a contemptible 
failure. Happily, In the late Alabama peonage cases, as in many cases of 
union violence, the federal thread was available when the local courts had 
proved to be shoddy and ravelings. There Is danger in any tool that will 
cut. Honesty and Intelligence in the people will make of the federal courts 
servants as useful as they are powerful. 

^Curtailing Freedom of Speech Is necessary in emergencies, and when 
obviously wholesome should be heartily supported by public opinion. Of 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 571 

the peaceable assembly meant in the Constitution, nor was it 
intended that any assembly, however peaceable, should be law- 

the different injunctions forbidding peaceable persuasion in the railway- 
strikes of 1894, the most explicit was one issued by Chief Justice Fuller, 
of the highest court of the nation. It forbade Debs and all others from 
sending messages or communicating in any way, for the purpose of order- 
ing or encouraging any persons to interfere, directly or indirectly, with 
railroad affairs. This injunction was justified because the whole strike 
was an illegal conspiracy to force" a third party (Pullman), and was 
illegal also in obstructing inter-state trade on a scale too large and too dan- 
gerous for the government to permit. 

And Freedom of the Press is Not Unlimited, being subject not only 
to the law of libel, but also to wider restraint when required for the 
public good. In the Coeur d'Alene case of 1892 in Idaho, where strikers 
forcibly took the mine away from the receiver, brought out the non-union- 
ists and killed fifty or more of them, two newspapers were enjoined. 
"While upholding the freedom of the press, the court held that if they 
were engaged in doing the acts complained of, or threatened to commit 
them by the use of their columns to incite the lawless or thoughtless to 
acts of violence or crime, the injunction against them also was well 
granted." With this a good citizen must surely agree. Stimson says: 
"There is of course no doubt that fair comment, even sympathetic 
editorials, are permissible to newspapers, provided they do not actually 
counsel a boycott or illegal acts of intimidation." For desiring more free- 
dom than this, no good reason appears. Moreover, where for any cause 
a strike degenerates into prolonged and habitual intimidation and terror- 
ism — as in 1903 with the displaced Waterbury street railway men (enjoin- 
ed after two months), and with the armed band of displaced West 
Virginia miners who, after a long period of violence, were recently en- 
joined and captured — it may be just and advisable to end the wretched 
aflrair by enjoining persuasion or interference of any kind. In such cases 
it may be evident, as at Omaha with picketing (page 564), that per- 
suasion is not to be kept peaceable, and besides, by continued violence 
the right of peaceable persuasion may be forfeited for the time, as in 
the presence of battle or siege free speech and other rights are properly 
suspended. The latter policy of nations was followed by the usurping 
and despotic strikers at Homestead (page 238) when they censored tele- 
grams, excluded newspaper reporters from the town, and posted in hotels 
plac&rds bearing these words: "By order of the advisory committee all 
discussion of the question of wages is absolutely prohibited here." 

Another Case in which the injunction forbade inducing by persuasion, 
together with picketing in any form, occurred at Cleveland in 1898. For 
two months men desiring to work were by force kept away from a wire 
mill- by crowds of strikers, numbering sometimes 200, and the few men 
at work were lodged and fed inside the mill. The violence admitted to 



572 Getting a Living: 

ful when the object was conspiring to boycott. The most 
effective step of all for getting rid of injunctions would be for 
unionists to give up frightening men by intimidation, and to be 

have occurred on at least eight occasions the strikers claimed was instigated 
by the employer with strike breakers in order to get an injunction, but in 
no case did they prove the peaceableness of their persuasion by allowing 
the strike breakers to enter. The one policeman on duty made no arrests 
(except at one time a strike breaker), while mayor and police testified that 
it was the "most orderly strike" and that no arrests were required. {Labor 
Bulletin No. 22.) At Richmond, Va., in 1903, the riotous spirit of street 
railway strikers, and the willful neglect of duty by policemen to favor them, 
were increased by the saying of the mayor (a candidate for re-election), in 
an address to a disorderly crowd, "I am with you boys, and have been from 
the first;" though later, with readiness to shoot down the first rioter appear- 
ing, order was eifectively restored by military authorities. Governor Durbin 
of Indiana, who, like President Roosevelt, is the type of official needed for 
saving American institutions, removed lately two members of the Marion 
police board who had declined to suppress violence in some bitter strikes. 
Their successors undertook to keep order. The employer's motive for hav- 
ing professional strike breakers or detectives unite with the strikers as spies 
to incite them to violence in order to get an injunction (sometimes charged 
by unionists), seems to be insufficient if the picketing were so peaceable as 
not to put the non-unionists in danger. If the latter could safely come and 
go, why should an injunction be desired? 

That Abuse of Free Speech May Not be Prevented, but may only 
be punished afterwards, was the ground taken by the Missouri Supreme 
Court In refusing in 1903 to issue an injunction against boycotters. {Labor 
Bulletin No. 44.) By the Missouri Constitution no law can impair the 
right of free speech, and anyone shall be free to say and publish "whatever 
he will, being responsible for all abuse of that liberty." The court said 
that the freedom here safeguarded could not exist at the same time with pre- 
vention ; that the idea was not prevention but penalty ; that the right of free 
speech — not to be temporarily enjoined, even for one moment— is possessed 
by one who is penniless as fully as by a rich man having property to be tak- 
en in damages; that if boycotters are not permitted to tell their wrongs, or 
supposed wrongs, what becomes of free speech and personal liberty? 
Such is the Position Taken in This Book (pages 214-23) as to simple 
request for aid in a strike by withholding patronage. But exerting pres- 
sure, by active urging or otherwise, is a different matter. While the 
clause of the constitution was intended to forbid the censorship common 
in Europe, it did not create but only protected a right already existing. 
For this very fact, pointed out by the court, it seems that the right was 
then already subject to reasonable restriction in war, or in a nuisance, such 
as loud swearing on the streets, or by injunction in such matters as boycott- 
ing and ruining a business by men irresponsible. This Missouri case Is 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 573 

content with simple persuasion and social disfavor, which near- 
ly everywhere are lawful if peaceable, despite the civil damage 
and moral compulsion involved. In very few labor disputes — 
in none perhaps apart from railroad work — has an injunction 
been issued that was not preceded, and partly justified, by 
intimidation of some kind, and in those not thus preceded the 
intimidation was expected ; while perhaps in no disputes, apart 
from railroad work, has peaceable persuasion been forbidden 
where intimidation did not accompany it, or was regarded as 

apparently the only one in which the right of free speech is interpreted so 
widely — that is, unless exerting pressure Is in it impliedly excepted. If 
not, by keeping pressure peaceable, boycotters without property might 
maliciously ruin business concerns to their hearts' content, and yet incur 
no risk of punishment. If for such injustice the natural cure for boycotting 
(page 220) proved insufficient, it seems improbable that a people capable 
of self-government, and fitted to survive, would not soon find legal means 
of prevention. 

New Rights to Boycott. Under British Columbia's new statute (British 
Labor Gazette, Nov. 1902) relieving the union from liability for members' 
acts that a majority has not regularly authorized or not concurred in, and 
relieving it and its members from liability or injunction for peaceably per- 
suading not only other workers but the employer's customers — under this 
boycott license unionists will not dare to go far in persuading outsiders, since 
employers would be driven to meet them in the same kind of conspiracy, as 
under repeal of laws punishing for murder private vengeance would run 
riot in assassination. What strong unionism, in refusal to patronize or 
handle, can do without unlawful threats was indicated by a labor leader 
who lately wrote, "Unless this strike is settled satisfactorily a boycott will 
be placed on engines that will wipe them off the face of the earth." 

Picketing for Customers. A late injunction from a New York Supreme 
Court justice {N. Y. Labor Bulletin, Dec. 1902), while forbidding unionist 
clerks, in picketing a store at Syracuse, to threaten or intimidate in word or 
manner, seemed to be faulty in asserting the Allen vs. Flood doctrine that 
motive is immaterial (page 210), but especially in ignoring (except as may 
be implied in the words "all circumstances") the fact that the most peace- 
able request not to patronize is felt to have a coercive threat back of it, and 
is oppressive (page 220), when made directly to a would-be customer in a 
town where unionists are united to boycott any one incurring their disfavor. 
Conditions in the town, as well as manner of request, are vital here. Only 
where one need not fear to disregard requests not to patronize, it seems, can 
societ>^ afford to depart so far from the old rule (making It always unlawful 
to induce customers) as to permit pickets to follow the Syracuse example of 
talking to cnctomers and handing circulars to them in front of the store 
struck against. 



574 Getting a Living. 

inseparable from it.^ The next best step for settling- the ques- 
tion would be for public opinion to require from officials a 
faithful enforcement of law during strikes. Either of these 
steps, and especiall}^ both, would leave little if anything to be 
done by legislation in connection with injunctions. At the 
same time they would dispose of all the trouble and bitterness 
connected with the hiring of armed deputies and with the call- 
ing out of troops. Moreover, 

Unionists Themselves Have Recourse to Injunctions, of 
which they are now rightly making use, as of the various other 
benefits of our government that are guaranteed to every citizen. 
In Omaha, in May, 1903, the federal court's injunction in favor 
of the business men's association, forbidding incitement of a 
strike among teamsters, who were connected with inter-state 
commerce, and restricting picketing by them, was followed the 
next week by an injunction from a state court against an un- 
lawful attempt of the same business men's association to break 
up the unions.^ The only strange feature of this proceeding 
was that the conspiracy was being carried out by the employers 
instead of the unionists, who, because of their own guilt, have 
long decried injunctions, but who at any time might have had 

*If in asking for an injunction the employer's ostensible purpose is pro- 
tection from wrongs to his property, but his real purpose "getting the 
court to break up the strike" (J. B. Leavitt), the only part of the strike 
broken up is its law breaking, to remedy which courts exist. So far as 
it depended on law breaking the strike had no right to succeed. If the em- 
ployer has been unjust to his men the law gives them large liberty of 
self-help in combination, and is swift to punish the employer for law 
breaking on his side ; but it does not abdicate, and turn him over to a 
mob. 

^he association was forbidden (i) to threaten to injure union men or 
their employers, or to refuse to sell them supplies at usual prices; (2) to 
attempt to force any employer to join the association or to discharge union- 
ists; (3) to fine members for breaking the agreement not to employ 
unionists; (4) to pay out money for any of these iUegal purposes, or to 
offer bribes to union officials; (5) to bring non-unionists to the city for the 
purpose of breaking up the unions; (6) to bring other injunction suits in 
this connection. All these things are unlawful when done to break up a 
business or a union. Judges Grosscup and Woods said in 1894 that if the 
railway companies had conspired to bring their men to terms by wholesale 
discharge and by stopping traffic, the companies, not less than the strikers, 
would have been liable criminally and to restraint by injunction. 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 575 

protection by injunction against unlawful attack on themselves 
by others following their own example. Such protection, it 
seems, unions will now need frequently. As the state, instead 
of treating unionists unfairly as claimed, has been over-lenient 
with them, encroaching but slightly on their rights with in- 
junctions while permitting almost unlimited law breaking to go 
unpunished, so the employers, though resorting to union 
methods sometimes in lockouts and blacklisting, have not 
heretofore met the union with its own permanent and 
wide-reaching combination. But to this the employers have 
at last been brought by unionism's growth in power, as 
shown by the enthusiasm for such combination at the recent 
meeting in New Orleans of manufacturers, by the Omaha case 
referred to above, and by the rise of such combinations among 
employers at various places in the spring strikes of 1903. These 
combinations are resorting to conspiracy, in boycotting employ- 
ers of unionists by shutting off the supply of materials ; and the 
unions, in this continuing and irreparable damage, will find the 
ready remedy to be the injunction. Union telegraphers at St. 
Louis have lately applied for an injunction against discharge of 
men because of their unionism, and against alleged blacklisting 
of such by the Western Union Company ;^ and at V^ineland, 
X. J., in 1902, protection by injunction was asked for officials 
of the glass blowers' union that were said to have been intimi- 

^The Latest Decision on Blacklisting. This application was denied in 
August, 1903, by U. S. Circuit Judge Rogers. The company admitted the 
charge, and claimed to have a right to commit the acts, which claim the 
judge upheld. He asserted not only the always incontestable fact that when 
not under contract an employer may lawfully discharge any man, at any 
time, for any or no reason, but said also, what has hitherto been deemed 
unlawful or questionable, that an employer's list of discharged men, with 
reasons for discharge, he may give to other employers, if its statements are 
true and it is honestly circulated. An employer's right to circulate such a 
list — even to urge others not to hire the men it names, and without waiting 
to be asked for their record (pages 225-6), — must stand, it seems, if by rea- 
son of trade solidarit\' unionists are to be permitted to entice away the men 
of employers anywhere in the trade, and to induce to boycott him all workers 
in the same trade or those related, or even the entire working class (page 
218). To permit blacklisting to be carried beyond the one trade, to the en- 
tire employing class, will be necessary to balance the present range of union 
boycotting, and under unionism's present power and policies may be neces- 
sary to maintain justice. (See Chapter XXVIII.) 



^'j6 Getting a Living, 

dated by the employer's hired guards. Such protection may be 
useful when a union's organizers are ordered with threats to 
leave a city, as was done recently at Tampa, Fla., with their 
narrow escape from assassination, and as has been done at a 
few other places in the South. In 1902 an official of the 
miners' union was assassinated in West Virginia. In these 
cases, as the practice is in preventing fraudulent use of a trade 
union's label, and in a variety of ordinary business cases not 
connected with conspiracy or with unionism, irreparable loss is 
to be prevented by the injunction, as a prompt stay of proceed- 
ings until the exact legal rights can be determined. 

The Sure Means of Securing the Rights of Unionists in- 
clude, not only their own cessation from law breaking, with 
support by them and all others of law enforcement, but also 
willing and patriotic submission by them to legal proceedings, 
with recognition of the truth that the law (so far as is possible 
under a public honesty which they largely make) is a terror to 
none but doers of evil — that it exists as much for unionists as 
for others, and is a protection to the measure deserved. The 
firemen and trainmen, instead of exposing weakness of con- 
tention by denouncing injunctions and courts when their offi- 
cials were lately enjoined not to order a strike on the Wabash 
system, obeyed the injunction as law-abiding citizens conscious 
of being in the right, and, to avoid prejudicing their case, re- 
frained from striking individually or collectively, as they might 
have done without order from their enjoined officials. Their 
counsel easily proved the groundlessness of the Wabash com- 
pany's charge, namely, that the brotherhood officials, to force 
recognition of their unions, were outsiders unduly enticing men 
whom they did not represent, and who were not dissatisfied. 
The injunction having given time for feelings to cool, the com- 
pany, finding it had no case, and being impelled to reasonable- 
ness by the irreproachable attitude of the unions and by the 
judge's conciliatory suggestions, — granted promptly many and 
liberal concessions, and cordial relations with its men were at 
once established. A few weeks later a strike similarly en- 
joined on the Mobile and Ohio railway was soon settled by 
compromise ; and the Kansas City teamsters, their legal and 
moral rights not being affected by the injunction, won their con- 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 577 

tention In two weeks. Judge Adams has been widely commended 
for his fairness in dissolving the Wabash injunction, but would 
not any judge have done likewise where in contention and be- 
havior the union was equally just? Those cases in which, be- 
cause the union is not proved to be acting unlawfully, an in- 
junction is refused, or is quickly dissolved, would at first be 
more numerous if unions more generally kept within their 
rights, and then all cases would be less numerous, because in- 
junctions would not be applied for. In Judge Hunger's recent 
injunction against the Omaha teamsters, those clauses which in 
effect forbade the union to hold meetings and continue its strike 
agreement were stricken out by him next day, and were pro- 
voked by a plan of boycotting. How far the protection of in- 
ter-state commerce is to prevent striking in transport industries 
is being settled, it is not to be doubted, as fast as conditions 
permit, and on a basis of justice to all. When a union in good 
faith follows the example of this one at Omaha, which had fifty 
members to answer the sheriff's call for deputies to protect non- 
unionists, it will seldom fail to obtain full justice from courts. 
The Omaha unions cooperated with the mayor and sheriff, who 
closed the saloons, prevented violence, and avoided necessity for 
calling out troops. Also, when unions in general do not depend 
on quibbling, but have a reasonable defense to make, judges 
will go further in learning both sides before granting injunc- 
tions, and will be more regardful of the union in setting the 
times of hearing. A New Jersey court in 1899 enjoined only 
those who were guilty of intimidation and violence, and re- 
fused to enjoin the glass blowers' union, or its officers who had 
come in to direct the strike, there being no evidence that they 
had encouraged or even tacitly approved the law breaking. In 
view of the provocation, in continued attempts to unionize old 
employees against their will by intimidation, even the West 
Virginia judges, in their much denounced injunctions, departed 
but slightly, in language or spirit, from what seems to be just. 
The full reports of these cases, in the Labor Bulletin, give a 
different impression from the one-sided reports of the many 
newspapers which, in coloring news and opinion to suit the 
workers, are far from being their real friends.^ In short, the 

^Inclination in the Workers' Favor is shown by sonie able journals in 
Z7 



57^ Getfing a Living. 

sound sense of justice in the American courts and people, which 
has lost none of the vigor evinced in the unequalled progress of 

which the evident intention is to be absolutely fair. "If the laws are 
violated, let those who violate them be punished by the ordinary legal 
procedure for their crimes or misdemeanors, and not for contempt of court." 
{Independent, May 21, 1903.) To this, if it means that injunctions should 
not be issued unnecessarily, nobody objects. But what if the officials make 
only a pretense to enforce the criminal law, and what if the offense, as in 
boycotting, may not be sufficiently criminal for indictment as conspiracy, 
but is only actionable for damages and the offenders are irresponsible? 
That must be a thoughtless statement of Dr. John P. Peters in which he 
says ("Labor and Capital," 1902) that injunctions are "unequivocally con- 
demned by lawyers and economists, as unnecessary, demoralizing, and in- 
herently illegal." But his opinion is not strange, in view of the continual 
declamation against the injunction, and of the fact that very few have had 
opportunity to learn the other side of the question. The justice and ne- 
cessity of injunctions do not rest on their practically unanimous defense 
by the highest courts in the world, but on the impregnable reasons these 
courts give, and on the manifest emptiness of the reasons urged to the con- 
trary. The recent case in Texas, sustained by the supreme court, in which 
punishment for contempt was imposed on a man for disobeying an injunc- 
tion against alienating the affections of a neighbor's wife, does not, as 
claimed, belittle the use of injunctions. If the offender was irresponsible, 
and the offense not criminal but only actionable for damages, an injunc- 
tion was the only lawful means of preventing its continuance. 

In the Argument in Gunton's Magazine (Sept. 1902) it is said the 
contempt in West Virginia consisted "simply in delivering addresses to 
the miners on strike," that Judge Jackson's injunction forbade "ordinary 
free speech," that there was "no danger to persons" and "nothing illegal," 
and that the court "converted a perfectly lawful act into a crime in order 
that it might inflict a penalty." If these premises were true the reasoning 
against the injunction would be conclusive. But the speaking {Labor Bul- 
letin No. 43) was not ordinary free speech, being illegal in damaging the 
employer's business while not being wanted by most of the workers, who 
moreover were being over-awed by hostile crowds near the mine, and 
feared the common penalty of bodily injury if they remained at work as 
they desired. In the case of Judge Keller's injunction, though the union 
leaders counseled law keeping and hence were treated with consideration by 
the court, the miners would not have deemed it safe to work without the 
guard of armed deputies, and small bodies of strikers called for volunteers 
to go into the mines and bring the workmen out. {Bulletin No. 45.) 
It was a "very effective method of conducting the strike," but not "peaceful 
and inoffensive." It would not be in suppressing but in permitting such 
conduct that one could say "the heart of American liberty is gone." 

Liberty Hardly Includes a right to combine to frighten others into 



The Injunction in Labor Disputes. 579 

the past, will insure to unionists all their rights, but no less will 
it insure that they do not long get more. When their policies 

doing what is objectionable to them. The judge apparently showed un- 
fairness by setting the date of hearing as to permanence five months in 
the future, as well as by unjudicial language; but means remained, if 
there were reasons, for having the issuing court, or another court higher, 
to promptly modify or vacate the injunction. No doubt, in securing in- 
junctions, as was the case in blacklisting, and is now the case in refusal 
to negotiate with union officials, employers are at heart opposed to union- 
ism, and to its just rights in striking; but what tendency there is with 
judges, lawyers and editors to think likewise is by nothing else so nearly 
justified as by unionism's unlawful designs and transparent subterfuges in 
its outcry against injunctions. 

The Courts are Winning, Not Contempt but Respect. The common 
deprecation of injunctions on the claim that they make the working class 
suspicious and hostile toward the courts, would have a basis alarming in- 
deed if it were true that judges take unduly the employer's side; but what 
is to be said if, as can almost invariably be shown, they take the view of 
unbiased justice? On the contrary, would they not incur and deserve 
public contempt if, instead of adhering to the law fearlessly, they expedient- 
ly regarded the worker's clamor? In their adherence to well settled ideas 
as to the rights of property, rights whose inviolability is no more to be de- 
sired by employers than by workers, it is improbable that judges, despite the 
unionist charge that they are the hirelings of corporations, are a hundredth 
part as much influenced by desire to gain personally valuable favor as are 
the legislators and officers who take the workers' side. Amid the play of 
passion, prejudice, and selfish design, no force confers such inestimable 
benefits on the workers as does the holding by the courts of all conduct to 
what the best available wisdom has settled in the Constitution as just. 
The workers may elect different judges, but in bending to their favor a 
justice that knows no class they will never get gain that does not bring 
to their own class a loss many times greater. What liberty there might 
be apart from just law would not be possessed by workers, but by a class 
of rich and shrewd men over-riding them, as in many lands in the past. 

Justice Not to be Secured by Threats. Excepting the very few cases 
in which an injunction was alleged to have been used to force men to accept 
a receiver's wage reduction (page 566), the appeal of strikers' counsel, 
that by injunction workers be nf^t driven into anarchy, comes near being 
a threat that if court decisions are not made to suit them they will take the 
law into their own hands by force. Judge Sage's reply must command 
respect for the courts indeed. He said: "So long as labor unions keep 
within the law, they will not be interfered with by courts, and they will 
have the good will of a vast majority of well disposed citizens. When they 
exceed those limits they will be restrained by the courts, and dealt with, 
whatever the consequences may be The extraordinary character of 



580 Getting a Living. 

are made to harmonize with this sense of justice, instead o£ 
opposing it, their troubles with courts will soon disappear. 

the appeal justifies me in adding that the courts will be ready for the 
emergency whenever the spirit of anarchy may manifest itself, and the 
American people, if need be, will rise in their majesty and crush it as a 
trip hammer would crush an eggshell." (Labor Bulletin No. 14.) So the 
people will do with lawlessness in general if they have a right to survive 
as a free nation. For the wrongs of any class the people will be reasonable 
enough to afford a remedy that is lawful. 

Amid the chorus of interested or thoughtless voices denouncing injunctions 
(such denunciation is now common in political platforms to catch voters) it 
was reassuring to the author, after this chapter had been w-ritten, to learn of 
the defense of the injunction, in an address before the Iowa Bar Association 
in July, 1903, by Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court. As 
reported, he said that never before was full and vigorous exercise of a court's 
power to enjoin worth so much to the nation as at present; that as popula- 
tion increases and interests crowd each other, a court's restraining power 
becomes more important than its power of criminal punishment. 

Mistake by Mr. Stimson eight years ago (P. S. Quarterly, 1895) in fearing 
that by issuing injunctions too freely, and by not enforcing them, the courts 
would incur contempt and cause a popular revulsion to drive out all equity 
jurisdiction (built up with difficulty fift>' years ago in some states) — seems to 
be shown by the effectiveness of recent injunctions, and by the apparent 
beginning among the people of a clear realization of the necessity for issuing 
them. 



CHAPTER XXL 

WORKINGMEN'S INSURANCE AND PENSIONS. 

Old Age Pensions, to be paid by the national or local au- 
thorities from taxation, now being urged in Great Britain, 
require earnest consideration there, by reason of the fact that 
in spite of a half century of rising wages and cheapening sup- 
plies it is impossible for a large proportion of the poor, with 
their present wage earning opportunities, to avoid falling upon 
charity during sickness and old age. Mr. Moor Ede, writing 
in the Contemporary Review of April, 1891, showed that among 
farm laborers very nearly half of those dying above 60 years of 
age had received poor relief ; that of all persons in the kingdom 
over 65, poor relief had been received at some time in 1890 by 
more than i in 3 ; and that in London, where i out of every 5 
deaths occurred in a workhouse or public hospital, the number 
receiving relief would be for wage earners alone about i in 3 
for all ages, or about i in 2 for those above 60 years. ^ In 1902, 
Mr. John Burns, socialist member of Parliament, in urging an 
old age pension bill, said in addresses to the working class that 
a third of them will die paupers. To realize this condition of 
affairs is startling. It is believed that five-sixths of this poverty 
among old people was not to be avoided by previous saving. 

No Possible Thrift Among the Workers Will Suffice. The 
out-of-work benefits of trade unions are only for those skilled 
or otherwise strong, while old age pensions of consequence 
from unions are beyond the money resources of the best paid 
workers. Four-fifths of British workers are not in unions, 

^In England and Wales the total number of persons, excluding vagrants 
and lunatics, that received pauper relief at any time during the year 1892 
was 1,573,074. Of these the relief was indoor (in an almshouse) to 458,210, 
and outdoor (in their homes) to 1,114,864. Those of 65 years and over 
who received relief w^ere 29.3 per cent of the total population of that age. 
The percentage for all ages was 5.4. 

(581) 



582 Getting a Living. 

mainly because none exist in their trades or towns. The sick 
benefits of the numerous friendly societies are only for those 
who can pay dues the year round, not for the many in cities 
who have no work in winter, nor for the large unskilled class 
who never have work regularly, nor for farm laborers earning for 
the whole year an average of but $2.50 to $4.25 a week without 
board. In some communities of the West of England it has 
been a custom with farm hands to eat meat but once a week. 
Men thus supported can save nothing for old age or sickness.^ 
Hence, the demand is growing that something must be done by 
the government to rescue people from pauperism. The present 
attention given the subject, though poverty is less deep and 
general than it was formerly, arises largely from the spread 
among the workers, now a reading and a voting class, of the 
socialistic hatred of charity, and of a belief that all, under a 
right, should be well provided for by the state. This sentiment, 
strongest among the more ignorant of the workers agitated, 
reaches the politicians through their desire for votes, and 
reaches the educated classes generally in the now prevailing 
^One Out of Four Underfed. Mr. B. S. Rowntree, in his book "Pov- 
erty," shows that by thorough house-to-house canvassing he found in the 
busy year 1899 that of the 75,000 people in York, England, 9.91 per cent 
earned less than the minimum necessary to maintain bodily strength ; and 
17.93 per cent more, though earning enough, failed to get that minimum by 
reason of dissipation or wasteful spending. So a total of 27.84 per cent 
were actually suffering to a greater or less extent from starvation. Mr. 
Charles Booth found this percentage In London to be 30.7 for the years 
1887-92. It is believed the York figures are about correct for all English 
cities, and that the rural population, only 23 per cent of the total, fare 
little if any better. Hence, those partially starved are about i out of 4, 
in the nation ranking first in wealth per head, and ranking next to the 
United States in total wealth. Mr. Rowntree's standard of minimum earn- 
ings for physical efficiency means that never a penny is to be spent for 
toys, sweets, pretty clothes, postage, newspapers, carfare, tobacco, union 
dues, medicine or physicians; and that not a day of work is to be lost. 
As these conditions are practically Impossible to keep, the waste that puts 
many in the 17.93 P^r cent Is excusable. {The Nation, June 5, 1902.) 
Being underfed causes a high death rate, especially among the young, 
promotes drunkenness and other vice, and keeps down wages by making 
labor Inefficient, and makes people too dull to get as much for their money 
as those better off, which in the aggregate would be Impossible anyhow 
by reason of the smallness of purchases. "The destruction of the poor is 
their poverty." 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 583 

and commendable idea that means must promptly be found for 
removing or alleviating all of society's woes.^ 

What Can be Done for This Deplorable Poverty? Ger- 
many's answer is insurance against accident, sickness, and old 
age — provided under a system controlled by the government, 
that it may be safe and adequate, and made compulsory for all 
earning but 2,000 marks or less per year ($476), that those 
needing it most, the less thrifty, may be reached. Her estab- 
lishment of compulsory insurance is called the most radical step 
taken by a government in social matters since the rise of the 
modern industrial system.^ But Bismarck, the founder of the 

^John Graham Brooks, American Academy of Political Science Papers No. 
122. 

sGermany's Old Age Pensions were paid in 1897 to over 400,000 pen- 
sioners, amounting that year to $13,385,459, of which $5,254,959 were 
provided by the state — an average of about $30 in all for each pensioner. 
The sickness pension law was enacted in 1883, the accident in 1884, and 
the old age in 1889. For a person above 16 years, man or woman, earning 
$83 or less a year, the premium payment for an old age pension is 3>^ 
cents a week (first class), and for one earning $202 to $273 (fourth class) 
it is 7% cents. Payment is made by means of stamps sold at post- 
offices and pasted on each worker's card or pass book. The employer is 
held responsible for the payment, and in some cases keeps in his office the 
cards of all his employees. By law he must pay at least half of the dues, 
but often agrees to pay all, without deduction from wages, especially when 
the sum is only 3 to 5 cents a week. This action of the employer has 
been mentioned as an increase in wages partly by law, but very likely it 
would answer as a sufficient reason for refusing a demand that might 
otherwise have secured an increase much larger; while with only those work- 
ers living very near to the line of want would the insurance dues so curtail 
their living as to force a rise of wages for preventing inefficiency from 
weakness and discontent. The dues for accident insurance must all be 
paid by the employer; he usually pays all the dues for the sickness in- 
surance too, but is required by law to pay but one-third. A pension is 
drawn after five years of payments, by all reaching 70 years and by all 
of any age if disabled from earning a total of one-third of previous wages. 
For the first class the total annual pension is $23.85 after 5 years, and $25.23 
after 30 years ; for the fourth class these sums are $33.56 and $45.46. Of this, 
in each case the same, $11.90 comes from the state; the balance comes from 
the fund derived from the weekly dues, which stop while a person is un- 
employed.' The total paid in by a worker falls to his widov/ in case of his 
death before receiving a pension. By the three kinds of insurance — 
accident, sickness and old age — every wage worker in the country earn- 
ing not over $476, a total of 11,500,000 persons in 1894, is insured against 



584 Getting a Living. 

German system, was not in a position to answer the question 
on its merits. The governing party estabHshed the pension 

inability to work, whatever the cause. For one person the old age and 
accident pensions together must not exceed $98.77 a year. The total in- 
come from old age dues in 1894 was $24,116,000. The interest income 
increases with the growth of the reserve fund. (W. F. Willoughby, 
"Workingmen's Insurance," 1898.) 

The Pension Systems of Various Countries. Austria established com- 
pulsory insurance in 1888 for sickness and accident, and began in 1898 a 
plan for old age pensions, which have not yet gone into effect. Russia 
has old age insurance for workers in government mines. France has had 
compulsory accident insurance for miners since 1894, half the dues (4 per 
cent of wages) being borne by the employer and half by the employee. 
There are a number of accident insurance and old age pension associa- 
tions carried on voluntarily in France, as there were in Germany before the 
state's compulsory system was adopted. The French government promotes 
these in different ways, paying yearly about $2,000,000 to the seamen's pen- 
sion fund, and nearly $3,000,000 toward other pension funds for working 
people. Compulsory systems of accident insurance, and perhaps eventually of 
old age pensions, at least for dangerous trades, will probably be established 
soon in France, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway; though in 
France the compulsion may be limited to only a few trades by the excellence 
of the accident insurance the liability law leads employers to provide vol- 
untarily through their trade associations. Accident insurance for all 
employees is important for small employers, who may not be able to pay 
the compensation required by the liability law. By Denmark's law of 1891, 
said to be bad in principle and effect, every man or woman of good 
character reaching 60 years, who in the previous ten years received no 
charitable relief, can obtain, if in need, a pension sufficient for support, 
half of it paid by the national and half by the local government. In 1896 
an average of $29, the highest sum being $96, was allowed to each of 
36,246 persons. The New Zealand government since 1899 P^ys $87.59 
a year to persons past 65, of reasonably good character (sober for preceding 
five years), who have not deprived themselves of property (and have lived 
25 years in the colony), while Victoria and New South Wales each started 
in 1900 with a government old age pension to such persons of $2.43 a week. 
In New Zealand, to obtain a pension, one's yearly income must not exceed 
£52. For every pound of income above £52 one pound is deducted from 
the pension, and also one for every £15 of property above £270 free of debt. 
Husband and wife each get a full pension if the former's income and 
pension do not exceed £104. The wealth of sons is not considered. To 
a pension official's objection, "Your income last year was over £1 a week," 
the pensioner replied, "Thank you, sir; it shall not occur again." (Lloyd.) 

In New Zealand half of all over 65 are pensioners — in Victoria a third. 
The yearly cost of these pensions in Denmark (population 2,400,000) had 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 585 

system to outbid the socialists for working class favor ; to save 
the established order of government and of industry by giving 
the people a measure of w^hat the rapidly increasing socialists 
threatened to secure by revolutionary changes, possibly by 
overturning the monarchy, and by large extension of state con- 
trol or ownership of industry. Moreover, to the strongly cen- 
tralized German government, the pension system, apart from 
the menace of socialism, is desirable for several reasons. Its 
reliable record of every man insured (notice must at once be 
given of removal) is valuable to the police and to the recruiting 
officers of the army. As pension rights and payments are for- 
feited by emigrating from the country, the system binds men to 
the state, and gives them reasons of self-interest for desiring to 
maintain the government unchanged. Also, as shown by many 
kinds of state intervention, the Germans prefer discipline, and 
growth through obedience to authority, rather than self-directed 
progress by the people for themselves. It has been said^ that 
the aim in Germany seems to be to make the people workers and 
soldiers, rather than to make them men and citizens. The 
policy of Austria is about the same, and there is a similar tend- 
ency on the Continent generally, including Switzerland, whose 
government, though highly democratic, makes many regula- 
tions for the people. 

The Outcome of Compulsory Pensions might be expected to 
involve less evil in Germany than in perhaps any other land. 
Intelligence, industry, and frugality are ingrained in the nature 
of the people, while able and wise men are permanently in con- 
trol of government and of business. The fact that the scheme 
did not arouse enthusiasm, nor in some quarters even confidence 
(because too socialistic for some and not enough so for others), 
has tended perhaps, together with the smallness of the pensions, 
to prevent growth of a disposition toward relaxing diligence 
and economy, and of a disposition toward placing dependence 

risen in 1902 to $1,400,000. Belgium's state aid to private pension funds 
was in 1901 about $2,800,000 (population 6,700,000). France is now con- 
sidering free pensions to the aged, and to persons with incurable disease, 
the yearly cost being estimated at $33,000,000 (population 38,000,000). The 
British Trade Union Congress declared in 1902 for a free pension of at 
least five shillings per week to all over 60. 

^By Ray Stannard Baker in a magazine article of 1902. 



586 Getting a Living. 

upon the pensions. The weekly dues are so small as not 
noticeably to affect ability to consume, and to save for one's 
self. For these reasons the compulsory pension system in 
Germany, at least for the present, and while the people retain 
the inspiration of the country's magnificent growth in trade^ 
wealth, and power, — may not seriously check self-reliance, am- 
bition, or the independent self-help of trade unionism. More- 
over, the cost of the three kinds of insurance is mainly borne by 
the workers themselves. They are compelled thus to save for 
future needs. What the employer pays comes from them, 
since they could otherwise get it and doubtless more in higher 
wages. The government's contribution, a small sum for a 
great empire, if the enormous amount of book-keeping does not 
cost as much additional, serves as an encouragement to the poor 
in their own payment of dues, by making the pension worth 
considering. The government's share also comes largely from 
the worl^ers, since taxation raises to them the price of family 
supplies, and by lessening the employer's net income lowers the 
level to which unionism can raise wages. 

By National Aid to Voluntary Systems of old age and in- 
validity insurance, to guarantee safety and to supplement dues 
paid, it has been shown in Belgium, France, and Italy that pri- 
vate initiative and self-reliance may not be enfeebled but 
strengthened. Italy established in 1900 a voluntary system of 
old age pensions toward which the state pays -about half. Bel- 
gium investigated the question of old age insurance in 1900, 
and decided that best results could be attained under her exist- 
ing voluntary systems, by improving her state aid to encourage 
the people's own self-help. By a new law of that year she 
provided for liberal state subsidies to persons making use of the 
law. France has been delaying adoption of state pension 
schemes urged, able reports and addresses being made by her 
statesmen on the necessity of self-reliance for maintaining inde- 
pendence and efficiency. The frugal French and Belgians, 
though earning lower average wages than the British, and liv- 
ing much poorer, seem to be better able by self-help to avoid 
pauperism. ]\Iore of the French live, as in old times, but very 
scantily, by farm and village work that is little affected by 
depression in the world's business, while it is chiefly by ex- 
change abroad that British industry is maintained. 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 587 

But Pensions Paid from Taxation, without the bulk of the 
cost being taken from the pensioner's own sayings, are very 
different from those of Germany. Can risk of want in sickness, 
in accident, and in old age be removed at public expense with- 
out thus causing other evils as bad or worse? If so, the de- 
mand of the socialists here ought surely to be granted, and a 
large portion of the anxiety and suffering be banished from the 
world. A British parliamentary commission in 1898 coilsid- 
ered a half hundred schemes submitted for pensioning the aged, 
finding several worthy of discussion, but not one that could be 
expected to result in more good than harm. Another commis- 
sion had investigated the question previously. Mr. Charles 
Booth's plan is simply for the government to pay 5 shillings a 
week to every person past 65 years, whether poor or not, that 
the pension may include none of the blighting stigma of pau- 
perism. The Danish pension mentioned above is intended to 
give the aged a repose to be considered, not as pauper relief, but 
as deserved or earned, by reason of their long service to the 
state in maintaining good character, in supporting themselves, 
and in doing their share in industry. The principle is the same 
with the pensions of Australasia. It has a generous and noble 
sound. How will it work? Ought one, and can one without 
grave injury to character, receive extra reward in payment of 
money for being wise and doing right, over and above the sub- 
stantial reward such conduct secures day by day in improved 
well-being ? 

From Poor Relief Without a Workhouse Test, begun in 
England in 1782, after two centuries and a half of rigid sup- 
pression of vagrancy and beggary, the evils caused by easy 
dealing witli the poor led in 1834 to a reaction in the other 
direction, to a poor law considered a model until the late years 
of agitation over old age pauperism.^ But it now seems to be 

^The English Poor Law of 1782 showed some effects of a guaranteed 
support regardless of effort or merit. By this law any person whose 
wages proved insufficient was not compelled to live in a workhouse, but 
was helped somewhat liberally at home from the public poor fund. Ef- 
fort to find or keep employment was slackened, with many more than the 
poor law officials could get positions for, and others brought wages below 
a living rate, depending upon the poor fund to supplement the low wages 
for which they offered to work (pages 470, 604). As relief was given to 



588 Getting a Living. 

admitted by conservative economists that the practice under 
this law of making pauperism a disgrace to be dreaded (taking 
away a pauper's vote, keeping most of them in workhouses, 
granting home relief only on severe terms, rarely to the able- 
bodied, and making the pauper living scanty and undesirable) 
— not only fails to turn the lowest grade of people away from 
pauperism by fear of want, but is also grossly unjust to the 
large proportion of British poor who prefer to suffer privation 
rather than to incur disgrace, and whose need arises from no 
fault of their own. The- view of the socialists, which affects 
the sentiment of organized laborers everywhere, is one extreme. 
For all the poverty they place the entire responsibility upon 
society, bitterly resenting the stigma attaching to poor relief, 
and claiming that in such relief the poor receive only their own, 
since the wage system robs them of most of their share, and 
thus causes the world's idleness and vice. (See Chapter 
XXIII.) The other extreme is the common practice of making 
no public provision for treating the worthy poor differently 
from the idle vagrant. Private charity aims to treat them 
differently, but only where well organized is it able to separate 
the good from the bad, and its power to help is irregular and 
uncertain. 

That Public Encouragement to Self-Help by the Poor is 
Needed, therefore, is coming to be recognized — to enable the 
worthy poor to provide for themselves ; to displace the fear of 
want as a goad with all who by kindly aid can be lifted above 
the need for such fear into self-respect, and thus made willing 
producers in society instead of partial parasites ; and to separate 
the purposely idle tramps to be dealt with rigorously. Hence, 



a family in proportion to the number of children, population among the 
lowest classes increased rapidly, with a rising percentage of illegitimacy. 
The law in effect offered a premium for more children in families too 
poor to support themselves. As this aid from charity lessened self-respect 
and industry in all accepting it, it not only taxed production to bear the 
cost of the charit}', but it also weakened production by lessening the 
efficiency of the lower grades of workers. In time such a poor law would 
bring national decay. To the unambitious it made poverty and indolence 
desirable. Its evil results are still noticeable in southwestern England, 
w^here in Dorset there are 41 paupers per 1,000 population, against 28.3 
for London. (Hadley, 53.) 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 589 

the British poor law will probably be changed somewhat, so 
that an aged person will not be required first to spend all his 
savings before poor relief will be allowed. At present, unless 
he has saved enough for full support he may as well have noth- 
ing. As the large amount necessary for full support is beyond 
the reach of the poor, they have little or no incentive to save for 
old age at all. This rule prevents partial support of aged 
parents by a son unable to support them wholly, since the only 
effect of his aid would be to reduce his father's allowance from 
the public fund. Moreover, besides stifling devotion to parents, 
and degrading and embittering the later life of worthy people, 
the disgrace of pauperism and the fear of want have the bad 
effect of driving low grade people still lower. By these penal- 
ties many of those who with best effort cannot escape them are 
led to regard society as unjust, and merit as unprofitable, and 
to adapt themselves to the worst by sinking in drunkenness and 
other degradation. 

Proposed Plans for Pensioning the Aged in Great Britain. 

Some such pension plan as that of Mr. Chamberlain will prob- 
ably be adopted soon in Great Britain. He proposes that the 
state donate £15 to the fund of each person that deposits £5 at 
the age of 25 years, and £1 ($4.86) in each year for the next 40 
years, giving him at 65 a pension of 5 shillings ($1.22) per 
week, and providing an allowance for his widow if he dies 
earlier. Mr. Sidney Webb's plan is for the state, beginning 
each year with a few persons, to provide a small pension at 65 
for any of good character who bear a thrift test easy enough to 
reach those of average foresight and self-control in the lowest 
class — such a test as paying dues regularly to a friendly society, 
or as saving a certain amount of money. Mr. Chamberlain has 
also an alternative scheme, by which the state would double at 
65 the friendly society pension a poor person had secured for 
himself. On these proposed terms the government's reward to 
a person, over and above the reward of possessing his own 
savings, would make with the latter a strong incentive to thrift 
and industry. This effect on character through life, and on 
increase of production, might keep the extra cost of such pen- 
sions low, or even make them a source of public gain, since so 



590 Getting a Living. 

many are now pensioned and degraded with support as pau- 
pers/ 

Effects of Compulsory Saving. These British proposals in- 
volve no compulsory saving, like that of the German system. 
To the British people, legal compulsion is repugnant, or any 
state action that is not clearly necessary. The advantage of 
the German system in securing for every one some provision for 
old age and sickness, but by forcing him to save, may be out- 
weighed in a half century by the compulsion's evil effects, in 
removing personal responsibility, and in weakening self-reliance 
and independence. Sooner or later such effects will inevitably 
lower efficiency in work, and thus lessen product. Bearing 
the necessity and consequences of looking out for one's self is 
the only way of retaining the ability to do so. In compulsory 
pensions the slight relief from this necessity may still be a 
relief too great. The public gain, in forcing the shiftless to 
save, may be outweighed by the public loss of taking from 
others the invaluable discipline of saving voluntarily. The 
effect of voluntary thrift on industry and character is often 
worth more than the savings of money. In a long series of 
years it is fairly certain that pensions for those only who choose 
to earn them will prove preferable to pensions made compulsory 
on all. For care in old age, to depend on pensions from the 
state or from one's employer (page 295), or even to depend on 
support by one's children (page 381) has much of the same 
weakening effect on character that there is in a married son's 
dependence on his father for help in financial difficulties. Such 
help is a curse rather than a blessing when the recipient depends 
on it, instead of being encouraged by it to greater effort for 
himself.^ If the capable father could continue to live, and 

^Pensioning Retired Officials. The claim of some, that there is as 
much reason why Great Britain should give free pensions to her aged poor 
as to about 200,000 persons from her army, navy, and civil service (Webb, 
Problems, 169) is unsound, so far as the right to a pension is considered 
as part of the salary, and as the pension is paid for in advance by its effect 
to secure abler men and better service. But for pensions to the poor earned 
by increased thrift, there would be a similar consideration to the state, in 
decrease of poor relief, in elevation of character, and in increase of pro- 
duction to be taxed. (Regarding British plans, see Willoughby, 279.) 

^Importance of Exercising Choice. Prof. Oilman's statement {U. S. 
Labor Bulletin No. 34, p. 466) that the German worker's tendency to save 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 591 

could make the son obey, some kinds of welfare might be bound 
on to the latter with certainty. In the same way, if Germany 
could continue to find enough suitable men to do the governing, 
she might hold her people to many conditions of perfection. 
But the people's need for help will increase, while those able to 
govern will decrease, and from helping the enfeebled mass will 
tend to turn into easy roads for exploiting them. For an exper- 
iment in trying to help people and at the same time to make 
them as strong in character as if they had helped themselves, 
Germany is the most favorable field; but it is scarcely to be 
doubted that even there the second part of the undertaking will 
fail. 

The Free Pensions of Australasia Will be a Failure, it may 
be predicted with some confidence. There the old age allow- 
ance is obtained, not by paying dues, as in Germany, or by saving 
money, as is proposed in Great Britain, but by being poor at 65, 
and for some time beforehand. Those not so thrifty as to be 
unaffected by the promise of $2.43 a week at 65 will very likely 
keep themselves free of property through life — an easy thing 
to do. The enactment of new laws forbidding the old and the 
inefficient to work for less than a fixed minimum wage, without 
permission from state officials, was one reason for giving pen- 
has been greatly increased, refers to effects of his certainty, without law- 
suit, of compensation for injury by accident (p. 596). It must be that his 
security in this respect (as does general safety under good government) 
leads him to value more highly his life and its opportunities, and hence to 
strive more to utilize them by saving. It would seem too that the intro- 
duction of the German old age pensions might set people's minds upon 
saving for the future, and increase such saving for a time. Yet those 
who needed to be forced by law to save would soon relax effort, while 
others might be influenced more by the present increase of ready and sate 
means of voluntary saving and insuring, and might develop much greater 
capability by exercise of individual judgment. The risks of saving in the 
American ways of depositing and investing yield returns in capability that 
outweigh the cost in losses. 

Moreover^ apart from bad effects on character, some observers consider 
the German compulsory insurance too costly for its benefits. It involves 
a vast bureaucratic system, with an enormous burden of detail, while the 
litigation has far exceeded expectations, and no adequate solution has been 
found for a great problem of fraud in feigning illness. But there is no 
thought of abandoning the system — only of modifying it as experience 
teaches. 



592 Getting a Living. 

sions, and is a stronger reason for relaxing effort and depend- 
ing on them. In Victoria double as many persons have applied 
for pensions as were expected, and bad effects began at once.^ 
In Denmark too there is said to be a tendency to get rid of 
savings before the pension age ; and even in Germany there has 
been not only considerable pretence of sickness for the sake of 
the sick benefit, but not a little scheming to get on that side of 
the dividing line between wage income classes that is most ad- 
vantageous. The element of fraud in willful preparation to be 
poor, or even in the least weakening of saving, years before, by 
reason of the pension, will degrade character, diminish product 
through life, and give the state less wealth to tax. The Aus- 
tralasian experiment will doubtless be valuable in proving the 
falsity of some of the socialistic teachings. It not only increases 
public outlay, but by lessening production and saving it dries up 
the source of tax income, thus burning the candle at both ends. 
The Safe Methods of Helping People. By taxes on scarcity 
value of land (not on improvements), on net earnings of busi- 

^Review of Reviews, June, 1901. 

Blighting Effects. The free pensions of New South Wales, says the 
Sydney Telegraph, have created a new class of state dependents, at alarm- 
ing annual cost, without relieving charity to any appreciable extent; 
and have encouraged unthrift and imposition, besides loosening ties of kin- 
ship and weakening moral obligations. {Public Opinion, May 7, 1903.) 
At the end of the first eighteen months New Zealand's annual pension ex- 
pense was $950,000, a pretty large sum for 750,000 people bearing tariff 
taxes of 50 per cent on important necessaries, and carrj ing the largest per 
capita debt in the world. Mr. Lloyd calls the New Zealand pensioners 
"veterans of work, old soldiers of the industrial array." But hereafter 
people there will take care in their work not to be too valorous — will find 
discretion the better part. The premier said the pensions are like edu- 
cation, in being a return for indirect taxation. But education gives efficiency, 
while the pensions will serve as a bribe to be otherwise. Free pensions at 
65 to all, whether poor or not, by Mr. Booth's plan, recommended by Dr. 
E. E. Hale in Cosmopolitan, June, 1903, would cost the state enormously, 
and while people would not need to keep poor to get a pension, dependence 
on it would lead the great unthrifty mass to relax effort to save, and a vast 
amount of consequent privation would be the lot of people whose need 
came before the pension age. Those too thrifty to be tempted by the 
pension to relax effort would have no need for it except in a few cases of 
misfortune. Those so feeble in will as to need the prospect of a pension 
to lift from "despair" and induce to save, would be too feeble to resist 
the temptation to spend all and depend on the pension. 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 593 

ness, and on inheritances and incomes — rent, interest and 
profits may be largely taken for the public, without possibility of 
shifting the tax by raising prices, and without discouraging 
production or wealth accumulation if the taxing and spending 
policy is wise. Revenue thus raised may be given to the poor 
in the benefits of cheap supplies under free trade in necessaries, 
of industrial education, of scientific bureaus for increasing sup- 
plies by teaching the best development of resources, and even in 
pension donations to those who are thus induced to save larger 
sums by their own effort, and thereby to pay the public for the 
pension received. But with human nature as it is and has 
always been, the time will never come when, without ruining 
character and bringing poverty to all, the poor can be so helped 
as to relieve them from the stern necessity of providing for 
themselves or suffering the consequences. To a large extent 
nature has decreed that every tub must stand on its own bottom. 
Natural penalties require that outright giving be indulged in 
sparingly. The state or city can supply the people with free 
games (the pleasures of parks and libraries), but it can never 
supply them with free bread and live. 

Australasian Conditions. Moreover, with the mild climate, 
rich soil, and resourceful population of New Zealand, there 
would seem to be little more need for pensions than in Texas — 
little more need for a European problem of the poor than for a 
European standing army. Offering pensions will bring appli- 
cants anywhere. An easy chance to get help from the state will 
soon make the need for it. Mr. Lloyd^ mentions crowds of 
men in small cities of New Zealand, even in good times, asking 
the mayor when he would be ready with public work to be done 
to keep them from want. New South Wales (population then 
about a million and a half) has spent nearly a million dollars in 
one year in helping the unemployed by means of relief work in 
constructing things not wanted. The public debt of New Zea- 
land is the largest in the world per capita, surpassing that of 
France, and is very large after deduction is made for value of 
government railroads, which in Australasia are generally oper- 
ated at a loss. It seems that if the people of New Zealand were 
as busy as their government (page 712), the latter would not 

^In his books "Newest England" and "A Country Without Strikes." 1900. 
38 



594 Getting a Living. 

have so many of them on its hands. From the questionable 
step of assisting people to emigrate to New Zealand from Eng- 
land, the appetite for assistance has grown until the govern- 
ment has assumed unheard of functions. The more it takes 
from the people the burden of responsibility, the less their per- 
sonal capacity becomes. The high cost of New Zealand's co- 
operative work, in which, spurning the thought of sub-contract- 
ing, it takes the risks, supplies material and superintendence, 
and pays high wages to men whose interest it seeks without 
regard to its own, — is said to be over-balanced by the gain of 
rescuing the unemployed from pauperism ; but it looks, on the 
contrary, as if pauperism is thus being created. Perhaps, 
before serious harm results, New Zealand will change its policy 
to teaching rather than helping. Its activity is now intended to 
be encouragement to self-help, but so far is aiding carried that 
a more probable result, it seems, will be a stifling of self-help. 
The use necessary for the existence of self-helping ability must 
be made real, instead of make-believe, by actual exposure to 
the consequences of failure. Not a few changes of policy have 
been made in New Zealand heretofore. The Australasians are 
among the best of the world's people, and may not continue 
long in an unsafe way. By reason of sparse population and 
great distances, more than the usual government intervention, 
to prevent growth of harmful monopoly, is necessary in Aus- 
tralasia — in state railways and mines, and in state regulation of 
insurance, shipping, and banking. The wisdom of these kinds 
of regulation has been proved in many lands. But the unwis- 
dom of much helping of individuals has been proved in many 
lands also, and doubtless will soon have been proved again in 
Australasia. Her states (page 340) will soon be forced to 
stop the increase of public aid, since the growth of that helpless 
frame of mind v/hich comes from continued borrowing without 
paying — a mood that tends to find excuses for repudiation — 
will soon take away ability to borrow. The state's advantage, 
emphasized by socialists, of being able to borrow at low inter- 
est, disappears when it tries to do too much. 

Employers' Liability. For the poor in the United States, 
there is fortunately no problem of pensions. In her rich re- 
sources and uncrowded population, very few of the deserving 



Workinginen's Insurance and Pensions 595 

need public help in old age. To raise the level of welfare 
there are better means to be taken. For lessening poverty and 
suffering among her people, one of the first reforms recom- 
mended by economists is a change of the common law doctrine 
as to fellow servants. By this, as practically settled by the 
national supreme court, a workman cannot sue the employer 
for damages from an injury due to the fault of another work- 
man unless the latter — especially if in authority over the in- 
jured person, and also if not — was negligent in an act that was 
a positive duty of the employer ;^ and of course damages cannot 
be secured in that great majority of accident cases which are 
due to no one's own fault, but to the unavoidable risks of the 
business. A number of American states have changed the law, 
especially for railroad companies, so as to make the employer 
Hable in case of fault by any one of the employees in many of 
the different grades of responsibility. The Colorado law of 
1901 makes every employer liable for the negligence of any 
employee at all, and in scope this act is approached by those of 
some other states. But it leaves unaffected the cases arising 
from the risks of the business, and the employee's right to sue 
is generally of little value, by reason of the expense and the 
tmcertainty of gaining a suit. 

Further Advanced in Europe Than in America. The ques- 
tion of employer's liability was admirably settled in Great 
Britain by the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897.^ It not 
only makes the employer liable in every case where the injured 
workman's own negligence was not the cause, but fixes a scale 
of damages to be paid according to gravity of injury, without 
suit at law. The employer relieves himself by voluntarily in- 
suring, at his own expense, all his men against accident. The 
insurance premium, falling alike on all competing employers in 
the country, is added to prices and thus thrown on the public, 
who ought to bear it as a necessary part of the cost of produc- 
tion. This change of law was made some years before on the 
Continent, and in connection with the change the German and 
Austrian systems of government accident insurance were then 

^See the complete article in U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 31. 

■Described in Mr. Willoughby's book. See also U. S. Labor Bulletin 
Nos. 31, 32, and 40, for employer's liability laws of the United States and 
of foreign countries. 



596 Getting a Living. 

established. French employers insure their men in private ac- 
cident companies, as do the British, though different French 
industries have carried the matter further by organizing excel- 
lent mutual companies of their own. 

The Need for a Change of Employers' Liability Laws in 
America. There are solid advantages to the public in requir- 
ing the employer to pay without suit a fixed compensation for 
injury in all cases not caused by the fault of the injured man 
himself. The results are that machinery and methods are kept 
by the employer as safe as possible, law suits are avoided, in- 
jured men in most cases are well provided for, discontent from 
feelings of unfair treatment is prevented, and the cost to the 
public in higher prices is perhaps not noticeable. Many Amer- 
ican railway and mining companies (page 102) maintain acci- 
dent relief funds, chiefly by deduction from wages ; but laws in 
America similar to the British would provide for millions of 
workers not thus insured, and would remove the friction with 
employees over wage deductions for relief fund dues. Agita- 
tion by labor unionists in this matter (not yet engaged in ex- 
tensively by them or by others) might soon carry the reform to 
the completion it has reached in Europe and Australia. Public 
opinion is favorable, as shown by some modification of the 
common law rule in at least twenty-five states, and as shown in 
a few states by carrying the changes to or near the point of 
making the employer liable for negligence by any employee 
whatever.^ The annual cost to the employer of his men's 
accident insurance, perhaps not over $10 per $1,000 for very 
dangerous trades, would be a small disadvantage to industry in 
one state as compared with industry in other states not having 
the law. In fact it would probably result for employers in 
gain, being overbalanced by the saving from law suits, and in 
the greater good will and efficiency of employees. Industry in 

^Since the above was written Maryland has carried this reform practi- 
cally to the European completeness. Her law of 1903 makes the employer 
liable for all injuries not caused by the injured person's own negligence, 
and requires the employer to pay the state insurance department, for each 
employee, a sum graded according to danger. Half this sum may be de- 
ducted from wages by agreement (all of it no doubt, or any other sum, so 
far as the state has power in that matter). The state insurance commis- 
sioner pays $1,000 to the family of any employee killed while at work. 



Workingmens Insurance and Pensions. 597 

general is most vigorous under the varied but wise labor laws 
of such commonwealths as Massachusetts and Great Britain.^ 

'Do Labor Laws Drive Away Industries? Despite the fact that em- 
ployers still oppose labor laws, and with the same arguments and unfulfilled 
prophecies used sixty years ago in England (page 334), Carroll D. Wright 
says there has been perhaps not a single instance in which a desire to avoid 
labor laws had a noteworthy influence toward inducing location of an indus- 
try in one state rather than another, and that most of the New Englanders 
building cotton mills in the South still retain their New England mills. 
By detailed statistics the New York labor department proved, in its report 
for 1900, that Massachusetts, which leads all the states in number and 
strictness of factory laws, leads them all none the less in industrial 
progress, as evidenced by aggregate well-being and also in such particulars 
as building of factories, rise of wages, and increase of workmen's savings. 
In Europe the laws apply to the country as a whole, but the countries there 
compete with one another industrially as do our states, though the latter 
have no tariffs. By reason of the long absence in the South of manufactur- 
ing, the bidding there for Northern capital by offering freedom from labor 
laws is probably not felt to be the unfair competition that it is (page 507). 

Under the Difficulty of Inducing the States to Enact Uniform Laws 
(which uniformity is urged by the factory inspectors' association), it is 
well that for unfair competition nature soon brings retribution, in the dull- 
ing and weakening of operatives worked too young and too long, and paid 
too little. That this effect is being observed by Southern people is 
shown by their new laws restricting child labor, and by the readiness of 
many of their manufacturers to discontinue night work and to lessen hours. 
Unionism also equalizes conditions gradually by bringing into its fold 
the more efficient workers everywhere. Moreover, the competition, though 
unfair, is not vitally serious. So far as the New Jersey manufacturer's 
disadvantage in being limited by law to a week of 55 hours, against 66 
and 72 in the South, is not balanced by faster or finer work, he has recourse 
to adjustment of w^ages ; and the only condition to prevent lowering of pay 
is access by his workers to better business, which is open to him also. These 
natural remedies will prevent the growth of the present slight demand 
for national uniformity of hours under a law of Congress. Conceivably 
such a law might become constitutional if necessary to prevent grave in- 
jury by production with exploited labor in one state of cheap goods to be 
shipped into other states; but if so the people would have lost capacity for 
self-help, and would be likely to lose their general liberty in the old way 
of centralizing power unduly in the national government at the loss of the 
local governments. 

The Old Bogy of Unequal Advantage in Competition appears in this 
matter of labor laws. It must have been as a tobacco manufacturer, not 
as the able economist he is, that Mr. Theodore Marburg advocated a con- 
stitutional amendment to enable Congress to enact an eight-hour law for 



59^ Getting a Living, 

Unemployment Insurance, which is furnished by private 
companies in Germany, together with insurance against reduc- 
tion of salaries and a great variety of other risks, has been tried 
on a small scale under public control, both on a voluntary and 
on a compulsory basis, by several cities of Switzerland and 
Germany, especially in winter during the dull times of 1893-97. 

all the states alike, and said that securing such a law would be doing for 
the white laborer something akin to what Lincoln did for the black. (Re- 
port of Civic Federation meeting, Dec. 1902.) In laws on hours state uni- 
formity was emphasized as important by the Industrial Commission. We 
can agree with Mr. Marburg (p. 442) that the state, as Jevons taught^ 
should do whatever will increase general well-being — even to taking the 
criminal's natural right to life. But this protectionist, unionist, and so- 
cialist idea of necessity for equalizing competition is unsound (see chapters 
on prison labor, collective bargaining, and trade liberty). Unions are right 
(see Mr= Gompers' address in the report cited) in disregarding the claim 
of employers that before adopting in a trade the eight-hour day adherence 
to it should first be secured from all competing employers in this country^ 
and even with the trade in Europe. 

Instead of Thus Waiting for the Impossible, unionists rightly exact at 
each place all that its labor market and product market will afford, but do 
not close out an employer to competitors unless his workers can go to the 
latter or to a better trade (pages 126, 335). Similarly, to escape union ex- 
actions carried too high, book printers have rightly sought to best utilize 
the field's advantages by locating in smaller cities out from New York and 
Chicago, while many other concerns are now said to be leaving the latter 
place, much trade has been driven from New York, and in years past union- 
ism has killed a few industries in different cities. Fortunately, the em- 
ployer cannot usually be penned up and robbed, nor can the worker be 
exploited unless he is helpless, and even then exploiting him is soon found 
not to pay. The trade advantages of location in a large city raise high 
the limit of union wages there; the disadvantages of distance from it, con- 
sidered with the gains of lower wages and lower rents elsewhere, determine 
to what extent employers can leave it. With the tariff Congress can do 
nothing for a short day in farming and other exporting trades not to be 
protected, and those trades it could protect the cheapest home labor could 
enter unless shut out and exploited by union monopoly as in city building 
trades and local services. Six hours for a trade in one state and twelve 
in another would be no greater difference than there is now in local wages 
(p. 150), and in costs of fuel and freight. The disadvantages of the em- 
ployer in the worst location his employees must obviate by taking low pay 
unless better work is open to them, as "the pauper labor of Europe" must 
do. For a day unduly shortened the pay is a similar safety valve (p. 421). 
Attempts to make artificial equality are bad if carried far. 



Workingmen's Insurance and Pensions. 599 

The risk proved ill-suited to insurance, which led to relaxation 
of effort to get and hold employment, and threw the cost on the 
public and on those insured who had regular work. However, 
a demand for such insurance by the state is growing among 
German socialists, together with a demand for old age pensions 
paid from taxes, and guaranteed support when work is scarce 
without the stigma of charity ; and the government is consider- 
ing pensions for widows and orphans. This risk of unemploy- 
ment is best insured against in the out-of-work benefits of 
trade unions, which detect fraud and assist members to find 
work. For workers not in unions the need is best met by the 
now numerous and successful free employment bureaus of 
states and cities. Sickness insurance is best provided by trade 
unions and mutual benefit societies, in which mutual acquaint- 
ance of members can alone prevent fraud in pretended sickness. 
The sickness insurance in Germany has proved faulty in this 
respect, despite its administration by local boards. The Amer- 
ican companies now furnishing sickness insurance (on a small 
scale as yet) guard against fraud by limiting the benefits to 
specific diseases. 



CHAPTER XXII. 
THE POOR AND THE UNEMPLOYED. 

Misfits in the Industrial World cannot be avoided so long 
as each person has the hberty of choosing what he will do. 
Good judgment will never be possessed by everybody. Some 
will get the wrong work, and make a failure of it. Too many 
will choose one occupation and overcrowd it. But who wants 
surer success, if it were possible, at the cost of his liberty of 
choice — by taking from a socialistic state a compulsory assign- 
ment of work? People cannot possess a free will without 
risking consequences. One party in the case, the public, can- 
not rightly be held (nor will nature permit it to be held and 
live) to a certain act, such as supporting a man decently, when 
he too is not held to another act, such as earning his support, if 
his best efforts will do so. To the rule that everything of value 
costs something, freedom is no exception.^ 

The Certainty of Support enjoyed by the child in the home, 
or by the barbarian in the tribal village, would now be to the 
civilized adult a poor return for having his hope and effort sunk 
in subjection to the ruling authority. An idea more vain could 
not well be imagined than that under socialism the people, the 
owners of the means of production, could enforce their will half 
so well as they do now. The effect of a guaranteed support, 
and of having to divide one's product with others, would be to 
weaken the desire and the power of self-assertion, and, what- 
ever the forms of voting, the people would soon fall under 
bosses or chiefs more or less absolute, as in tribal life in all ages. 

^Socialists make light of the freedom under present conditions, with the 
scant opportunities for the poor. But as in government it is only freedom 
to do right that is meant, so in industrial society it is only that freedom 
which under nature's law is socially and individually beneficial. Society 
is not free to help the poor as demanded by socialists. To do so would 
be to destroy itself. Even God, without destroying his character, is not 
free to depart from justice and mercy. 

(600) 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 60 1 

As socialism is approached, individual liberty disappears. By 
the vast bureaucratic system in Germany — the tens of thousands 
of officials that administer the government's compulsory pen- 
sions and various other activities — the people's power of choice 
is greatly curtailed, a few local voters having no influence over 
the rule imposed on them from distant headquarters. Some 
flagrant cases have occurred of wrongful arrest, and of various- 
ly arbitrary action, by officials not afifected by local disapproval. 
Any approach to complete socialism is for children and bar- 
barians, or for others brought into similar subjection and broth- 
erhood by danger or religious zeal. Such classes are the only 
people who have ever lived under socialism. Under the wise 
father's rule on the farm, the son who attains any influence in 
management of affairs does so with self-reliance and proved 
ability. Sons of different character are in complete subjection. 
Where the latter obtain a voice in affairs by clamor, instead of 
by merit, the family suffers loss or impoverishment. In the 
barbarous tribe the men whose voices were heard in the council 
were those who could do things, especially fighting, and who 
competed with one another in prowess, not those who saved 
themselves by huddling in the tribe's bosom. In the successful 
and wealthy communistic societies, like the Shakers, a few wise 
men are in full control, sometimes one man for many years. 
The spirit of their followers, contented and religious, is the 
opposite of that of the clamorous people who now desire to 
establish socialism.^ It is by meekness, holding these perma- 
nent communities together, that their members inherit what 

^Above All it is Obedience (what is more obnoxious to socialists?) that 
is the basis of collectivism. It is self-abnegation, with obedience to su- 
periors, that holds together the monks in the monasteries of the Cath- 
olic and other religions; and it was obedience (chiefly to himself) 
which Brigham Young said, if carried far enough, would bring the Mor- 
mons to their ideal of pure communism. The Mormons become more like 
other people, and more enterprising, as obedience declines and intelligence in- 
creases. In not one co-operative community in America that has lived ten 
3ears have the rank and file a noteworthy share in the management. Gener- 
ally a democratic community dies quickly. Those communities have lived 
longest and prospered most in which "an almost military discipline has 
been exercised by some central authority." It seems that the kind of re- 
ligion best suited to hold together a co-operative community is a fanatical 
belief, which accepts leaders as divinely inspired. 



6o2 Getting a Living. 

they get of the earth. The dozens of these societies that have 
failed ignominiously in America (page 93) lacked the spirit 
of obedience to wiser members, of patient industry, of taking 
meekly what came, of sacrificing self for religion and the present 
world for the world to come. Too many of the members want- 
ed to get help instead of giving help, and by reason of debt and 
failure they soon had to separate to escape starvation. Some 
of the successful communities have separated because the 
younger members, coming in contact with outer society, grew 
tired of burying their talents for the sake of material comforts, 
and for the sake of a religion that too largely ignores the good 
of fellow men outside. Individualism and competition, regu- 
lated by laws that give all the help that nature permits, are 
evidently the system for civilized men and women, appreciating 
God's wonderful gifts in mind and in material resource, and 
rejoicing, like the youth leaving his paternal home, to take the 
responsibilities that open the field of wealth and achievement. 
Those in the best communities mentioned are fairly industrious 
(not enterprising), but without the religious motive, and the 
leadership of men brought up under competition, communism 
cannot coexist with machinery. It is suited only to the dull 
farming and stock raising of tribal times, the labor of which 
men had to do or starve at once.^ 

A Better Remedy Than Socialism. The one way by which 
a grown person can escape trouble is to learn how to use the 
free will — how to choose wisely. Mistakes are of less conse- 
quence to the child, or to the man under socialism, both being 
mainly provided for by others. That is why it is, there being no 

^Even the good people of Plymouth colony had soon to consider how to 
"obtaine a beter crope, that they might not still thus languish in miserie." 
After collectivism was abolished, and each family left to produce for itself, 
many worked well "which before would aledg weakness and inabilitie, 
whom to have compelled would have been thought great tiranie." (Gov. 
Bradford, quoted at length by Ely, "Industrial Society,"i903.) Commander 
Booth Tucker, who has charge of Salvation Army colonies, says community 
ownership "usually results in the lazy doing nothing and expecting every- 
thing, while the industrious do everything and get nothing — at least noth- 
ing commensurate with their toil. Thus a premium is placed on idleness." 
It is mainly by assistance to private ownership that men in the army col- 
onies are reformed, as by such ownership civilization was built up at first 
(p. 45)- 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 603 

effectual teaching but experience, that under individuaHsm only 
can people acquire or retain the power to know and to do. 
Possession of this capacity, with the power to concentrate on 
the main work and avoid frittering away time, is the all-inclu- 
sive remedy for the present ills of society. 

The Duty of the Strong Classes of people — strong in wealth, 
influence, or practical ability to do — is to help and encourage 
the weaker classes to break away from bad habits, to develop 
desire and hope for better things, and to gain self-control and 
business judgment. What is best for each is best for all. 
Having each engaged at the needed work he can do best, gives 
the country the maximum of buying power, contentment, and 
good citizenship ; the minimum of incapacity, poverty, vice and 
crime. Assistance to the weak, however, must usually be con- 
fined by the state to such help as that of tenement and factory 
laws, and practical education ; and when rendered by the private 
citizen it is most effective if devoted to awakening hope, and to 
leading one into the work he ought to do. Excepting tempo- 
rary relief to the sick or hungry, to put them on their feet, the 
giving of anything that a person might get for himself will 
injure his character and make him more shiftless. This fact 
of human nature could not be more inflexibly decreed if it were 
written by God in gigantic letters of flame across the midnight 
sky. We can only help people to help themselves. It is in- 
evitable that suffering must come to those who fail to do their 
part to guard against it. It cannot even be warded off by 
society from those who do their best but make mistakes. Only 
the consequences of mistakes will make a person watchful to 
avoid them. The state and private societies might render the 
poor much more help of a permanent kind, such as finding good 
homes for children growing up in neglect and vice ; but pauper 
relief must always be scanty and undesirable. To make it 
better is to make more paupers and more misery. Unwise 
charity is less a waste of money than a waste of men.^ 

^The Fear of Want, many now argue, was exaggerated by the old 
economists as a necessary incentive to industry and prudence. Under so- 
cialistic influence, the tendency is now toward the other extreme, of a 
fairly good public support guaranteed. The claim that the fear of want 
is the worst element in poverty-, the stumbling block of progress, seems to 
be true of none perhaps except a few that are being brought downward 



6o4 Getting a Living. 

The Evil of Giving to Unknown Beggars. Kind-hearted 
people who give to unknown beggars, tramps, begging agents, 
and organ grinders, harm the receiver by turning him further 
from honest work, and maintain the begging practice by which 
society and the beggars themselves are cursed. Outright giv- 
ing is a dangerous practice, Irke administering morphine — to 
be resorted to in extreme cases only, and then by one who 
knows what he is doing. If there were no indiscriminate giv- 
ing, there would be no indiscriminate begging. The effort 
spent in going from house to house would in many cases be at 
once devoted to useful work if begging ceased to yield returns.^ 

by misfortune, with whom the fear of want weakens health and energy. 
Placing these on their feet is the most fruitful field for the helpfulness of 
friends, though it must sometimes be done by the state or by the general 
public, as in the case of great calamities. The main source of trouble in 
elevating the poor, the dull and shiftless, is that of want they have no fear 
at all, living like animals and savages without thought of the future, and 
caring so little for want that they make no effort to overcome it. This is the 
case, too, all the way up the social grades, with people who do not check 
present desire, and hence fail to save for improving their condition. By 
all kinds of education the public can awaken in every class a desire and 
effort for better things, and by quickly and variously recognizing merit 
(even to the extent in Europe of adding a little in pensions to personal 
savings) can encourage efforts at self-help; but by nature the fear of want 
— of exposure to consequences of neglect and failure — must remain with 
every person, so far as the state is concerned, down to the limit of a pau- 
per's support (which must be given, even though undeserved, to avoid 
the brutalizing effects of the presence of suffering on the public character.) 
Life is not child's play — is no make-believe affair. When people are 
grown they are supposed to be men and women. The ultra civilization 
that attempts to rule out exposure to want (and that goes very far in re- 
lieving legal punishment of its severity), will soon find itself moving 
backward toward the early socialistic state of barbarism. 

^The Giving of a Tip is felt by some to be a generous act; but almost 
unavoidably the receiver must be for that moment not a self-respecting 
wage worker but a bribe taker or a servile beggar. A subordinate officer 
who receives tips is not an impartial guardian of all, but is the tipper's 
hired mercenary. Tossing a coin in approval of a service well per- 
formed, was perhaps a proper act from a prince to a menial serf. But is 
not every man in America said to be a sovereign? The tendency of tips 
is to make beggars of all who receive them — to lead them to neglect the 
work they are supposed to be paid for in wages, in order to fawn upon 
those likely to give the largest tips. It is an evil way to show off wealth 
and generosity. Expectation of tips leads men to accept wages very low. 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 605 

This Hard View of Allowing People to Suffer Conse- 
quences, is there not something wrong with it ? Did not Christ 
and the Apostles teach that giving to the poor was an act of 

Some employees in barber shops and similar places are said to have no 
regular wages at all, depending wholly on tips. In such cases they are 
not beggars so far as they do not force their services on or pay from 
patrons, and so far as the latter know that a tip of a f.xed amount is to 
be given as the waiter's pay. Where the proprietor's charge is high 
enough to cover wages, as it surely seems in many cases, patrons giving 
tips pay twice. The Continent of Europe is noted for tipping, as might 
be expected in countries of low wages, many beggars, titled classes, and 
exclusion until recently of the common people from the rights of voters. 

A Reaction Against Tipping Has Set In. The British Museum con- 
tains placards stating that any employee who receives a tip will be 
discharged. A law forbidxJing tipping on sleeping cars was considered in 
1901 in the Colorado legislature, and in 1902 the practice was forbidden 
by the company on the Santa Fe dining cars. Many patrons of New York 
hotels, it is said, have been reserving their patronage for those in which 
employees are forbidden to receive tips. Even in Paris hotel employees 
it is said, are now seeking to abolish the practice, and to secure full wages 
instead. Such united action by the workers, aided by the patrons, as stated 
above, would soon bring employers to terms in America, under the grow- 
ing aversion toward tipping, which is believed to have fallen off by half 
within ten years. {Independent, March 26, 1903). Those who now refuse 
to tip are not disowning an obligation to pay the workers, since people of 
such principle are not the ones who, by starting the custom, led employers 
to lower or abolish wages. Such refusal, together with boycott of em- 
ployers who permit tipping, Is the surest means of having wages restored. 
No doubt in America tipping has been more the fault of a lordly giver 
than of a servile receiver, lordliness coming first and producing the 
servility. Very probably this was the reason for the growth of an ex- 
pectation of Christmas presents to letter carriers, who as a class would 
seem to be so well paid, and so efficient and self-respecting, as to avoid 
tip-receiving servility, unless drawn into it by a readiness of others ta 
give bribes for the sake of extra attention in service, to the loss of others 
neglected In consequence. Authorities would be justified In forbidding the 
earning of tips in time paid for by all for all. 

Additional facts as to tipping are the following from an editorial In The 
Independent of Aug. 27, 1903 (the article above cited was by a colored 
waiter). A union to secure higher wages and abolish tipping Is being 
formed at Chicago by colored porters of the Pullman company, which built 
up the tipping practice in America. The inherent badness is indicated by 
furtive giving, and by a receiving that indicates shame to be seen. The 
indeterminate amount necessitates beggary, separating the case from that 
of one price, open and honest. Formerly all trade and industry were 



6o6 Getting a Living. 

great virtue? Undoubtedly, relief for present need, without 
hope of permanent benefit, was necessary with a hundred cases 
in that day to one case in our time. In that cruel age of con- 
quest and oppression, the Eastern Roman Empire was filled 
with the leprous and the blind. Christianity and civilization 
had not yet had time to teach society to help these systemati- 
cally. Reliable medical and sanitary science had not yet been 
born. Blind Bartimeus, and tens of thousands like him, could 
only beg or starve. But is it to be supposed that Christ or 
Paul taught as a duty any helping that carries with it dishon- 
esty to the heart and shiftlessness to the character? After 
feeding the five thousand (because being far from the city and 
already faint, they could not get food for themselves) Christ 
quickly perceived that the idle mob, in their desire to make him 
their king, were selfishly seeking from the Great Provider the 
earthly bread that perishes. He did not permanently provide 
all the poor with plenty, as with his power he ought to have 
done according to the socialistic exaltation of the material 
above the spiritual. For all his blessing of men in body the 
purpose was that he might thereby bless them in soul. "He 
that provideth not for his own, and especially those of his own 
household, hath denied the faith." Paul, the author of this 
declaration, and of the maxim that he who will not work should 
not be permitted to eat, and who said to Timothy, ''Let not the 
church be burdened," — exhorted that "with quietness they 
work and eat their own bread," and urged to "labor with your 
hands, that ye may have to give to him that needeth." No 
advice is given as to receiving. Perhaps because of the hope- 
lessness of insurrection or escape, slaves are urged to serve 
their masters faithfully, as unto God, not only the good and 
gentle masters, but also the froward. It is unlikely that any 
receiving was taught as right that could be avoided. To do 

deemed degrading, and even doctors' pay depended in amount on the 
patron's bounty, as is yet the case with lower grade musicians. Anti- 
tipping leagues have come and gone. W. D. Howells, some years ago, 
pleaded with New York hackmen against tipping. But the time will come 
when the bootblack will be offended by a tip, as any one of us would be. 
It may be added that from the luxury that ruined Rome some elements of 
unionism must save society in tipping, as well as in liveried service. So- 
ciety is in danger in these respects. 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 607 

what little good he could was just as much a duty on the 
weakest, as to do much was a duty on the strongest. "Every 
man according to his several ability." It was in proportion to 
her means that the widow's two mites were the largest gift 
of all. 

The Teaching of Christ as to Helping Others was summar- 
ized in his saying, ''He that is chief among you, let him be as he 
that doth serve. "^ Ministering, not being ministered unto, is 

^* 'Give to Him That Ask eth Thee" is no more to be taken as a 
warrant for giving to beggars indiscriminately, than is Christ's other say- 
ing, "Ask, and it shall be given thee," to be taken as a promise that any 
foolish or wicked prayer will be granted, or as a warrant to every one to 
beg for a living. As by common sense implication, as well as by express 
words elsewhere, one is not to ask amiss, but only for things deemed con- 
sistent with one's spiritual good, so one's giving must be directed to the 
highest good of the recipients, and special care must be taken, because of 
their weakness in mind and will. "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute 
to the poor" was a call to the rich young man to devote his life to the 
gospel, as the apostles had done, and as those do now who realize, from 
fitness in person and in conditions, that thus they can best serve God and 
their fellow men. But it is not to be supposed that the money was heed- 
lessly to be flung among groups of vagrants ; and if any care at all was to 
be used in the distribution, what warrant was there for not making it as 
wise as possible? 

The Giving Was to Consist of Service, such as the ministering to the 
sick and imprisoned for which many will hear with joy the words "Come, 
ye blessed of my Father." Moreover, these teachings of Christ were ad- 
dressed to his disciples, who were poor themselves. In healing the lame 
man Peter said, "Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, that give 
I unto thee." Aside from a few cases of such healing, their part was to 
comfort with the helpful attentions that have little or no money value, and 
with the spiritual gift of the gospel. In fact, a readiness to give to him 
that asks, and not to turn the borrower away, is the rule now with people 
in general, especially with the conscientious, when the giving or lending 
is deserved, and will yield net results in good above the trouble involved. 
Many a person today, after being smitten on one cheek, turns the other 
also. This is done by missionaries and Christian workers who persevere 
when their first advances to win people are repulsed. But they do not 
continue turning the other cheek until their lives and resources are wasted. 
On the contrar}', when persecuted in one city they flee to another, and take 
advantage of law by appealing to Caesar. Christ's teaching must be in- 
terpreted sensibly as a whole. On detached fragments of it all kinds of 
foolish vagaries have been based. In determining "what would Jesus do," 
one may be sure that no beggar would deceive him, and that he would 



6o8 Getting a Living. 

the essence of the gospel. Now this is exactly what is taught 
at the present time by all who bring reason to bear upon the 
subject. There is no problem about helping the poor. All 
understand it who have earnestly considered it. He who would 
help cannot do his part by lazily dropping a nickel into a tin 
cup. He can not buy off from the duty so cheaply. By that 
act he establishes begging as one of the country's industries. 
To lift out of beggary he must become humanity's servant, 
spending his time to find out the cause of destitution, that he 
may seek to restore the beggar to honest self-support. If the 
need must be supplied at once, he must see that his money is 
spent wisely, giving an order for food or fuel, as the good 
Samaritan handed his money, not to the man helped, but to 
the innkeeper. It is visiting the widow and fatherless (help- 
ing them with advice and influence to earn a living) that James 
says is pure religion and undefiled. If one cannot do that, he 
must at least do the unpleasant duty, often requiring moral 
courage, of refusing to give unless he is sure the gift will be a 
real benefit.^ The perfected system of helping the poor is 

render no aid to the injury of character. For an admirable discussion of 
this subject, see F. G. Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 1900. 

^Generosity as a Virtue. Since, in the show of generosity in giving to 
beggars, like that of giving lips, there is a disposition to regard as stingy 
the person who refuses, which disposition is of course encouraged by the 
recipients, there is a call here for readiness to do disagreeable things for 
the sake of principle — a readiness that is marked in trade unionism. Those 
who are averse to being guided by principle, and who pliantly do as 
others do around them, are largely responsible for the growth of evils. 
Generosity is a showy and popular virtue, but one of very low grade. 
It is characteristic of gamblers and dive keepers, and of others in bad 
business, as it was of slaveholders and of all people who gained by op- 
pression, its effect on the giver being to justify his conduct and ease his 
conscience, while reconciling the oppressed to submission. The unquestion- 
ing generosity of saloon keepers wins customers. But the sympathy and 
hospitality of barbarous tribes, and of the poor in the slums, are not con- 
nected with wrong. These virtues, instinctively felt to be" praiseworthy 
by many in every class, are the highest morality to be reached among people 
led by mere feeling, and largely incapable of the deliberate thinking which 
perceives that the man ready to share his last loaf with the undeserving 
confirms them in their shiftlessness, and makes his own life and theirs 
parasitic in sharing the loaves of many others to whom they are unable to 
pay just dues. 

But the Typical Charity Worker's Practice of Investigating merit 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 609 

that of the educated and refined people who are led by the spirit 
of Christianity, or of philanthropy springing from it, to give 
themselves — to be good with and not to the poor — by living in 
social settlements in the slums, that by neighborly example, as 
well as by precept, they may continually teach honest work, 
innocent recreation, and noble self-improvement. This is the 
kind of helping that helps. The altruism that is a benefit to the 
poor changes them into a different kind of people. Christ's 
method of reaching one at a time (but for social no less than 
individual good) men's hearts and characters, not attempting 
outward mass movements, — is still the method in charitable 
effort by individuals. The public can change environment, by 
means of factory and tenement laws, but in this way too the 
results are attained by improving character. Whatever the 
state's resources, to none but the utterly helpless does it dare 
to supply food and shelter.^ 

before giving tends to displace his sympathy with hardness of heart — 
to displace spontaneous goodness with studied design — and hence may de- 
serve some of the criticism it evokes. Spontaneous goodness is so precious 
a quality in this world of trouble that it needs to be conserved. Miss 
Addams's commendation in her recent book of the lady who continued to 
befriend an old woman of faulty character is doubtless based on the lady's 
exemplification of Christ's spirit of loving all, down to the lowest, and of 
forgiving seventy times seven. However, it seems that while one should 
give out spontaneously his love and sympathy, he might, without harden- 
ing his own and other hearts, give out his money where It would do good 
instead of harm. The fondness of the poor for impulsiveness from the 
heart, with their dislike of prudence from the Intellect, Is the main cause of 
their trouble. People must learn to have heart and intellect together and 
to confine each to its proper functions. 

'Methods of Giving Judiciously. Giving In time of need a sack of 
flour or a lot of cast-off clothing is commendable as encouragement to poor 
people who It Is known will not relax effort and depend on* gifts. But 
unless industry and self-respect are strong, the smallest act of charity Is 
risky. Giving the washerwoman an extra quarter will often Induce her to 
gain by appearing poor Instead of by doing good work. Sometimes useful 
things can be given to a family without the knowledge of a drunken father, 
who would not hesitate to squander his wages Saturday night if he knew 
substantial gifts were coming next week. When gifts thus expected fall 
to arrive, the family misery becomes acute, worse than If no gifts at all 
were received. A great deal of misery has come In that way. Any gift 
to the poor, however meritorious the giver may feel over It, Is a doubtful 
39 



6io Getting a Lr/mg. 

To Make One 's Money Gifts a Blessing Instead of a Curse, 
they must be reserved for those whose cases are known, or must 
be bestowed through a society that makes a business of inves- 
tigating and helping inteUigently. Ordinarily, except within 

the circle of one's neighbors and acquaintances, it is through 
such societies that the busy man's giving must be done. He 
cannot be a good Samaritan and be at the same time a faithful 
steward ( Peabody^ in the business by which he best serves God 
and his fellow men. Yet few persons are rightly so busy as 
not to have some spare time for the best help of all. which is to 
find for a person suitable employment, continuing to advise and 
encourage him, that he may become well able to care for him- 
self and to make the most of his life. ''Xot gifts, but a friend." 
And it is upon a person's deserts, not his needs, that assistance 
by private givers must depend. If need is made the basis of 
help, honest merit is placed at a discount, and thieving false 
pretense at a premium. It is the drawing effect of need that 
leads Chinese beggars to maim and blind themselves horribly, 
human fiends in large cities to make begging children miser- 
able in appearance by cruel abuse, and organ grinders every- 
Avhere to pose in mute appeal on the streets. Assistance given 
by the poor authorities is based on need, but with them there is 
little room for fraud. 

Charity as a Means of Grace. During the ^Middle Ages 
charity, in the giving of money, without concern as to the 
character of the beggar, was viewed as a Christian grace, as 
bringing the giver into favor with God. The beggars, swarm- 
benefit unless first the trouble is taken to find out that it will not cause a 
relaxation of work. In some cases a person to whose family gifts came 
often, would, in dependence on them., offer to work for lower wages, in 
order to get or hold employment. The tendency of the giving would be 
to make hisi work worth less. An important effort, both of the state and 
of private charit^", is to rescue sick women and helpless childfen from 
homes of drunkenness and neglect. Nearly all the young taken from such 
homes can be brought up to good character. Michigan cares admirably 
for dependent or abused children. Cases are reported by the police and 
poor authorities, and when no relative or friend can be found to care for 
a child, it is sent to the State Public School at Coldwater, to be cared for 
and educated, and to be placed in a family home as soon as practicable. 
The diminution of crime in England during recent years seems largely due 
to the efficiency- of caring for ?,b",ndoned and perverted children. 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 6ii 

ing around churches and monasteries, very naturally took care 
that opportunity to grow in grace was not lacking. Their de- 
scendants may be seen in the repulsive human objects that now 
beset tourists in Southern Europe, where much medisevalism 
remains. There are (:ases of European towns in which an 
endowment, left many years ago by a pious giver to provide a 
charity income for the poor, had the effect to draw into the 
ranks of the recipients a majority of the people.^ It was such 
ruinous results in Europe that forced the state to take the care 
of the poor away from the church, a transfer that the state only 
recently completed in Italy. The same blind ideas of Christ's 
teaching on charity are responsible for most of the American 
begging of to-day. A scabby arm, showing need but question- 
able merit, still has fetching powers when shown from door to 
door.- 

The First Remedy for All This Misery among beggars, 
many of whom are innocent little ones driven to the streets 
because people give to them, is simply to make a settled prac- 
tice of never giving to any person not known. This may seem 
unkind, as does denial of harmful indulgence to one's own 
children, but it is eft'ectual. \Mth no giving to strangers, no 

^The Influence of Homes for the Aged. The home for the destitute 
that is to be established with the late W. S. Stratton's $15,000,000 (page 
382) will presumably admit none but those who from age or infirmity are 
obviously helpless, and who in no way were hastened in becoming so in 
order to gain admission. The presence of such homes tends to multiply 
the classes to be aided. It is a dangerous thing to change far the world's 
conditions from their natural hardness, instead of educating people to meet 
it. Despite the public dutv- to care for the needy among the old soldiers 
of America, and despite the splendid record of her soldiers in war and in 
peace, it is probably true that the effect of pensions and of soldiers' homes 
to induce men to give up work, and to take on age or infirmity, has brought 
on the country in lessened production a far greater cost than the three 
billions paid out in money, besides a heavier cost still in degradation of 
character. Even to one's own son a legacy is a source of harm — often of 
ruin — unless he has been trained to be worthy of it, like the several gen- 
erations of Vanderbilts. 

■"The man who boasts that he never lets an appeal for charity- go un- 
heeded, gets satisfaction for himself, but at the cost of a lot of harm to 
the beggar and to society." — Jackson Press. In this pious selfishness he 
worships by means of human sacrifice, since by his gifts the beggar is 
ruined bodv and soul. 



6i2 Getting a Living. 

needy person would travel from his home town. There, each 
poor person being known, criminal false pretense would be 
difficult, and temptation would be least to give up honest self- 
support. Charity would depend upon merit, not upon appear- 
ance of need. Cases of helpless desti^iution would then fall 
upon the taxpayers of the home community, which ought to 
support them. Those able partially to maintain themselves 
would have there the best chance to get the work they could do. 
These facts have long been well understood by charity workers. 
The union of charities in a city — working together to reach all 
the really deserving, to weed out all others, to keep people from 
and lift them out of pauperism by elevating their home life and 
their habits, to abolish poverty as far as possible — should have 
hearty cooperation from all citizens.^ Refusing to give to 
strange applicants, every person should refer them to the char- 
ity office. When they are deserving they will not object to 
going there. People who persist in giving to strangers, and to 
the known undeserving, vv^ill continue to be responsible for the 
beggary there is. The laws that now stop some of the profes- 
sional begging might perhaps be extended to cover more cases. 
The newspaper writer who sometimes holds up his hands in 
horror at the prosecution of beggars by the charity society's 
agents, forgets that he is criticising people who know their 
business, and whose motives would bear a test better than his.^ 

^Largely through charity organization the paupers of London, despite 
the increase of population, decreased from 138,536 in 1869 to 89,926 in 
1886. At Elberfeld, Germany, where cooperation of public and private 
agencies has brought poor relief the nearest to perfection, the poor tax fell 
from 4V2 francs to 2. Half the cost of legitimate government is in sup- 
porting, punishing, and guarding the pauper and criminal classes. (C. R. 
Henderson, "Defective Classes.") 

"It may be seriously questioned whether individual attempts to relieve 
pauperism have not done more harm than good. This is true beyond all 
question so far as alms giving is concerned." (Prof. R. T. Ely.) 

^Complaints Charging Neglect on somebody are common on occasions 
of waste, as w^hen peaches rot by the carload in growers' orchards while 
the poor in the cities are suffering for such food. But there is no occasion 
here to urge consideration for the poor. At every point a force is in 
operation tenfold stronger, the motive of personal gain. Who would try 
so hard to get the peaches to consumers as the growers and shippers who 
must lose all that spoil? It is for them to choose between the risk of loss 
by spoiling, and the risk of loss by hiring too much help for a time and a 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 613 

Neither Will There be Any Tramps when people stop feed- 
ing them, though in their case the law is clearly lacking. 
Oftentimes people will not refuse food to a tramp for fear he 
will take revenge and harm their property. To the extent that 
they are thus forced in their giving, a tramp is a robber or 
blackmailer. Doubtless the present lenience of the law 
toward tramps is due to a notion that they are unfortunate men 
seeking work. They are often portrayed in that light by 
political or socialistic speakers, when trying to show that the 
times are out of joint. Any one personally familiar with the 
subject might jokingly answer that a tramp who really wanted 
work could get thirty dollars a week as a monstrosity in a 
dime museum. They are as easily insulted with offers of work 
beneath their dignity as with food that is lacking in delicacy. 
Most of them have lost the power to work many days at a time 
— have lost v.^ill power rather than bodily strength. With 
nearly all cases it was the whisky habit that first changed them 
from workers into tramps. Drinking^ and tramping continued, 
soon confirm them in their vagrancy. But the remedy for their 
case is easy. Some cities are now freed from tramps by im- 
posing a work punishment in the jail yard. A law confining 
tramps at hard labor for a considerable time, if strictly en- 
forced, would soon cause them to go round a state. Such laws 
in all the states would stop the tramp nuisance. They would 
then live like other drinking men. Pity for the poor tramp 

quantity of work not to be known beforehand. It is the necessity of labor, 
at good wages, to handle the fruit, that deprives the city poor of more 
and cheaper peaches. Nature is full of such waste as that of a glut of 
fruit. Wood rots in the forest while people freeze. Their minds and 
hands were given them for supplying themselves, either by going to where 
the food can be obtained, or by doing the work that will bring it. In their 
readiness to relax effort and depend on help, all the public can do for them 
is patiently to teach and assist them into better self-support. 

^Should the Tramp "be Blamed? While by means of the wisest laws to 
be devised in regard to the currency, the tariff, etc., and by means of 
individual foresight (page 456), every effort should be made to avert in- 
dustrial depression, and while society is to blame for its slowness of prog- 
ress in this respect, as well as in respect to tramp laws, the tramp himself 
is to blame for his condition so far as he failed, when first idle, to do his 
best toward overcoming the temptations that were not yielded to by many 
thousands of others in like circumstances and with like moral endowment. 



6 14 Getting a Living. 

could not do more for him than to deHver him from the miseries 
of tramping. Deliverance of the people from his begging 
would be extra gain. The home town is the best place for a 
tramp, or for any other person who cannot easily get and hold 
employment. There those who know him will give him the 
help he deserves. Too often it is because he is known at home 
that he goes elsewhere. There is a decided difference between 
tramps and workingmen. The latter include the Swedes and 
Finns, who on arrival in America go anywhere and get work 
at once, asking no favors. An employer takes risks, and gen- 
erally loses in inefficiency, by hiring a tramp or other stranger 
who needs help ; yet, in spite of shabby clothes, a man ready to 
do faithfully anything offered can usually get a chance to prove 
his desirableness. Of those forlorn men, not yet settled into 
the tramp's indifference, who warm benches all night in the 
parks of cities containing hundreds like themselves, it can hard- 
ly be that many would have had no chance for a living at or 
near home, if they had shown merit, and had been willing to do 
any kind of honest work. That because of general dull times 
there is no work at home is a reason why all except the indus- 
trious should stay there and use what few chances they have, 
and fall on home charity if one must come to that. In other 
towns idle residents of known character deserve and get the 
new work arising.^ 

^Work to be Had by the Deserving. W. A. Wyckoff, in telling the 
Industrial Commission in 1901 (Vol. XIV.) of the jobs open everywhere^ 
at wages from which he could save half, when after graduating from 
Princeton he tramped across the country as a laborer in 1892-3, — admitted 
that the case would be different for a man with a family. But the mar- 
ried man's settled character makes employers prefer him, and gives him 
a better claim on local favor, as does his family's trade, and their ties of 
relationship. Mr. Wyckoff, finding no need for trouble with one willing 
to do any honest work, thinks the unemployment problem arises from lack 
of adjustment between labor demand and supply (page 264). The crying 
demand for several years in many states for labor to save crops is only 
seasonal, but Mr. Wyckoff, being suitable in appearance to take into a 
family, was urged by farmers to stay over winter at nominal pay, that 
they might be sure of his labor next spring. 

Tramps and Officers' Fees. In Michigan the arrest of tramps now 

affords opportunity for local officers to gain from fees at county expense. 

The two following paragraphs appeared in a newspaper of Jan. 12, 1901: 

"So wrought up are the supervisors over the running of tramps 



The Poor and the Unemployed, 615 

A Standing Offer of Work or Relief to Every One in Need 

Is probably necessary to stop indiscriminate alms giving. Until 
there is a convenient place at which all in need will be at once 
provided for according to merit, the many people who lack the 
self-control required for the practical line of action set forth 
above, will continue to give to beggars. Many persons would 
rather give to five beats than to turn off one worthy case. The 
compassionate spirit of the giver is generally commendable, es- 
pecially in view of his own sacrifice, and of the fact that while 
yet untaught none but independent thinkers are blamable for 
holding false views of the merit of alms giving. Possibly the 
injury to society, from his keeping of beats on the road by 
giving to them, may not be much greater than would be the 
hardening effect on him and his class of turning away appar- 
ently needy people, with the knowledge that some of them were 
worthy. Before a general refusal to give could result in a 
general cessation of begging, the compassionate would need to 
harden their hearts against many pitiful appeals. Hence, to 
enable them to refuse without hardening their hearts, and to 
abolish all begging except appeals to friends, the duty of the 
public through government, it seems, is to assure givers that 
no worthy case is being neglected. Though in many a city a 
central body, acting for a union of separate charity societies, 
has done good work in investigating the merit of applicants for 
aid, the task is too great for private resources. A start toward 
assuming the task by the public has been made in the employ- 
through the city courts that one supervisor has offered a resolution 

which, if passed, would create a fund of $500 for the running down of 
persons engaged in the traffic illegally; also to offer a reward of $50 for 
the arrest and conviction of such officers." 

"On Monday night ido hoboes struck Durand. They were packed in 
a box car, and said they were going to Chicago. The railroad company 
can do nothing with such a gang, and say they allow them free trans- 
portation." 

The above estimate of the number of tramps was probably liberal, 
though in the spring of 1902, when employment was plentiful everywhere, 
no less than 125 in 11 days applied for lodging at the police tramp-house 
of Jackson, Mich. — 23 able bodied men in one night. Since 1901 some of 
the leading railroad companies, in different states, have been taking deter- 
mined steps to keep tramps off their trains, and have been using with 
some effect what law they have. They may succeed in making tramps 
less numerous along railways.- 



6i6 Getting a Living. 

ment offices now maintained free by the labor departments or 
bureaus of a number of American states.^ While everywhere 
there are public officials to care for the poor, they are not pre- 
pared to do more than to relieve utter destitution. They can 
do little or nothing toward investigating merit or finding em- 
ployment, and to avoid encouraging pauperism their simple 
giving of supplies has necessarily been kept uninviting and 
somewhat inadequate. The nearest and quickest approach to 

Tree Employment Offices are very useful, because of the ease with 
which men conducting such offices for gain swindle the poor persons pay- 
ing them fees. By law in some states the fee must be returned if no po- 
sition is secured. The New York state bureau in 1900 secured positions 
for 3,526 out of a total of 5,732 workers applying, the positions being mainly 
for domestic servants. For 1901 the state offices in the five largest cities 
of Ohio reported the following: Applicants for work, 12,635 males and 
10,688 females, of whom 8,155 males and 8,682 females secured work by the 
aid of the offices; applications for workers, 11,727 for males and 16,547 
for females. The state offices in Missouri's three largest cities, in 1901, re- 
ceived 12,035 applications for work, of which 8,107 were successful; and 
received 16,988 applications for help, 8,401 of which were supplied. At 
Seattle, Washington, the municipal employment office, conducted by a muni- 
cipal labor commissioner having the full confidence of both employers and 
workers, secured employment in 1898 for 24,183 persons, at a cost of only 
$1,377. Doubtless in many cases the same person obtained positions a 
number of times. 

In Europe free employment offices have been maintained by the state 
for nearly twenty years, and very successfully. Austria has two thousand 
of such offices, public or philanthropic. In 1899 the 15 largest German 
offices received 282,974 applications for workers and 300,800 applications 
for employment, and filled 216,532 positions. This success was largely due 
to cooperation between widely separated offices — a cooperation not yet im- 
portant in America. France has 1,500 licensed private agencies, and scores 
or hundreds of each class conducted free by municipalities, trade unions, 
employers' associations, and bodies composed of both employers and em- 
ployees. (See long summary in U. S. Labor Bulletin, Sept. 1903.) 

In New South Wales in 1896 public officials found work for 20,576 
persons, giving to many of them temporary relief and free transportation ; 
but most of them were employed on public work which the state had done 
especially for their relief. A recent newspaper note says that New Zealand 
now has 163 agencies where the unemployed are given government work 
at $2 a day of eight hours, and that in one month 2,346 were thus relieved. 
The number of agencies seems large, but the other figures are doubtless 
correct. It is not strange that Australasia is noted for unemployment. 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 617 

permanent abolition of poverty might be brought about, it 
seems, by a system composed of the following: 

1. Local Bureaus Conducted by the City, having as main 
functions — (a) To assist persons, without charge, to find work 
with private employers. As this department, to be kept sep- 
arate, would be simply an employment office, similar to those 
mentioned above, though more efficient perhaps in finding 
positions far and near, there would be no stigma upon appli- 
cants, (b) To determine accurately by investigation the de- 
gree of merit of every applicant for poor relief, and thus 
practically to abolish imposition, finding some suitable work, 
as far as practicable, for those of any capability, sending the 
sick to hospitals, or to relatives willing to take them, and placing 
the helpless in care of private or public charity, which by co- 
operation might soon care properly for every case. Beggars 
of various kinds, including organ grinders, or other street 
musicians who made any appeal to sympathy, could then be 
arrested as criminals ; private giving to strangers making 
appeals would in time become disreputable, as encouraging law 
breaking; and for lack of patronage begging agents would 
cease trying to sell things not wanted. Appealing to sympathy 
of strangers would mark one as a beggar, even though some- 
thing was offered for sale. One's application at the public 
bureau, not being known, should be counted nothing as a dis- 
grace compared with making appeals from door to door, (c) 
To give the destitute, while seeking employment, board and 
lodging for a few days, clean and wholesome but cheap and 
undesirable, to be paid for in work at a wage rate so low as to 
attract none but the really needy, the bureau providing some 
variety of work to suit different grades of strength, and making 
the work, as far as practicable, profitable toward support of the 
bureau, since paying for made work of little value is about as 
pauperizing as sheer giving. There would need to be, as there 
was not in New South Wales (page 339), public common sense 
sufficient to overcome the clamor that would be raised against 
the low wages and cheap board, by workers under the socialistic 
delusion that a good support from the public, at their chosen 
work in their chosen cities, would be only their rightful dues. 

2. An Industrial School in the country, for willing people 
for whom no work could be found, to be maintained by each 



6i8 Getting a Living. . 

large city. The manager of this school might produce, with 
the labor of inmates, farm supplies for the bureau described 
above, as well as for market, and might teach them a few suit- 
able trades, aiming to increase their purpose, capability, and 
self-respect, but paying low wages, so that the income from 
sale of products would cover, as far as practicable, all expenses 
of conducting and improving the school. The feeling among 
the men that they were fully paying their way, and were rising 
in efficiency, would be an elevating part of the discipline, and 
would partly neutralize the disgrace necessarily connected as a 
rule with inability to find and hold a position. The case would 
be different from that of a state university charging fees below 
cost. University instruction is not furnished elsewhere within 
reach of many whose attainment of it yields a good return to 
the state for its immediate loss from insufficiency of fees ; but 
the industrial school proposed would be for those only (the 
fewer the better) who had failed in other and preferable ways 
of learning trades and getting a living, who had come to it as a 
last resort, and who would be assisted to leave it and find pri- 
vate employment. 

3. A State Farm for all able-bodied applicants for aid who 
proved unwilling to v/ork — for all the tramps and vagrants of 
the whole state, and perhaps also for some other classes of 
confirmed drunkards. It would be simply a reform school, 
aiming by kindly encouragement to give its inmates self-respect 
and purpose, teaching them a few suitable trades, but strictly 
controlling them by compulsion, and keeping them confined 
perhaps indeterminately, until sufficiently reformed for honest 
self-support. Wages at some rate might be allowed, as a 
reward for good behavior and for progress in reformation. As 
the aim in enforcing labor would be, not to punish, but to 
develop capacity for holding a position, the labor should be 
made to produce as much clear money value as practicable. 
For its value alone would an employer hire it ; and that kind of 
labor alone would give the man performing it the ennobling 
feeling that he was paying his way, and was not riding as a 
dead weight on honest people already overburdened with many 
kinds of taxation. This salutary feeling might also be pro- 
moted by keeping an inmate's w^ages rather low — not higher 
than the net cash value of his labor to the state by the average 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 619 

of a term of years in the farm's administration. The main 
inducement to reform, and to work well, would be the release 
held out to all proving worthy of it. The success of the system 
would be measured by the fewness of the state farm's inmates, 
so long as none were at large who ought to be confined. An 
important result of confinement at the farm would be that its 
inmates while there would cease breeding their kind, to plague 
the next generation. 

Everybody Provided For. In these ways all those who 
were able and willing to work would be assisted in every way 
to find positions, and would have the work at the industrial 
school to fall back upon when no other was to be found. For 
those too weak to hold positions with private employers suitable 
care would be found-^in public almshouses at the last resort; 
and there, as far as practicable, character, health, and money 
would be saved by having the inmates do what work they could. 
Lastly, those who had strength and ability to work, but were 
unwilling to do so, would be handled with compulsion, as ene- 
mies both to themselves and to society, and their reformation 
would be sought through the best available means. Those of 
the second and third classes, to avoid the state's compulsion, 
would need to get their support from relatives, and refrain 
from appealing to the public. When one becomes a source of 
public annoyance, it is the state's duty to take him in hand. 

This System of Charity Would Be Unimportant in Good 
Times. Every city from a population of five thousand upward, 
might have, at least in winter, the employment and investigation 
bureau, in charge of its overseer of the poor, to whom beggars 
could always be referred. With no private giving, their num- 
ber would be few. For temporary board and work, beyond 
the relief provided under the present poor laws, there would be 
no need in the smaller cities, nor in many of the larger except 
in winter. As the habit of private giving was lessened, and as 
arrest of beggars became the rule, they would cease traveling 
from city to city. The state farm would be desirable in the 
populous states. In other states tramps and local vagrants are 
not numerous, and might be dealt with in a hard labor punish- 
ment in jails. With the large cities, the industrial school might 
be small in times of business activity. In farming districts, 
where people stay at home, and in new regions, to which only 



620 Getting a Living. 

the capable have come, public relief of poverty is but little 
needed or thought of. County poorhouses would there be 
sufficient, if conducted according to best principles. To avoid 
suggesting dependence on public aid to persons who otherwise 
would not think of turning from self-support, all this charity 
machinery should be kept unobtrusive, and none of its new 
features established where not positively needed. Most im- 
portant of all, perhaps, would be the spread of knowledge as to 
the evil of thoughtless giving, which for centuries has caused 
poverty and misery untold, and as to the necessity of so admin- 
istering charity as to reduce it to the minimum. In New York 
City the giving of food and fuel to take home has been stopped, 
with no increase of suffering or of demand on societies. In- 
stead, public money is now used for permanent benefit, such as 
the work of about 200 sanitary inspectors. As wise parents, 
by using persuasion and compulsion in proper proportion, can 
train children of average disposition to be practically free from 
troublesome faults, so the state, when voters have the knowl- 
edge and character to hold poor law administration to such 
parental example, and to carry out the needed reforms in taxa- 
tion, etc. (page 352), can soon abolish nine-tenths of the pres- 
ent poverty and misery. ^'Pauperism is an artificial condition, 
engendered or maintained by institutions expressly devised for 
its support. The arguments for restricting out-door relief to 
the vanishing point are probably irrefutable." By reform of 
charity administration^ alone, scientific authorities believe that 
the need of charity could be reduced to narrow limits. 

Relief Work in Time of Calamity is necessary now and then. 
In the famine of 1900 the British Indian government kept six 
millions of people from starving, those able to work being 
employed in making roads, and irrigation canals. Some Ger- 
man cities provided relief work in 1901-2. In Chicago during 
the winter of 1893-94, when the financial panic had caused 
many industries to suspend operation, a crowd of men, the 
highest number being 3,760, 70 per cent foreign, and consisting 
chiefly of the unmarried and unskilled floating population 
(average age 28), were given street and park work by the city, 

^Authoritative books on this subject are those of Homer Folks and Joseph 
Lee (New York, Macmillan Co., 1902), and that of Thomas Mackay, Lon- 
don, 1901. 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 621 

at ten cents per hour, paid in tickets for meals and lodging 
furnished at cost. There the discipline was strict, each man 
was given just enough days to keep him from sufifering, each 
one having relatives was induced to go to them when he had 
been reclothed, and the work was promptly curtailed when the 
opening of spring gave opportunity to find other employment. 
'It's a square deal," was the general sentiment of the men, who 
showed better courage after working a few days. Such relief 
work, or special relief without work, was provided by public 
authority in many cities of the North, including a number of 
the smaller ones, and at other places by voluntary bodies with 
funds privately raised — $250,000 in one movement at Pitts- 
burgh. In nearly all cases the experience was unsatisfactory, 
the temporary good being followed usually by increasing de- 
pendence, and by an appalling number of applications for help. 
Free soup houses for the able-bodied were especially demoraliz- 
ing. The actual value of the work done, on account of the 
wintry weather, of the inexperience of the men, and of lax dis- 
cipline, was generally about a third of its cost. At Buffalo 
putting the pay down to seventy cents a day failed to keep away 
thrifty foreigners who were not in need. In other cases $1.50 
a day was paid to men whose work was worth but a small 
fraction of that sum. Political desire to please the laboring 
class, "the victims of grinding monopoly" (many of them sat- 
urated with socialism that winter by the nightly harangues of 
agitators), led to disregard of safe principles of charity and of 
business, and fanned in many minds the dangerous idea that 
charity or the state will provide work in dull times, and hence 
that one need not provide for himself by saving, and by making 
his work such as will bring an income anywhere. Where the 
regular associated charity organization was not allowed to 
manage the relief, the soundness of its principles was shown by 
the unsatisfactory results. Relief agencies antagonistic to it 
attracted, by indiscriminate giving, crowds of vagrants from 
other places. Newspapers raised funds with frantic appeals, 
and increased the trouble by agitation. The experience as a 
whole indicated how quickly, except in a small tribe ruled auto- 
cratically, giving men employment to help them, on the social- 
istic "principle of ''the right to work," would break down society 
— by taxing away its wealth, by paralyzing the efficiency of its 



622 Getting a Living. 

labor, b}^ drying up its flow of supplies, and by increasing 
among the shiftless the number of children.^ The total cost of 
special relief in 1893-94 was perhaps four or five miUions of 
dollars. The cost in injury to character was perhaps much 
greater. Foreign experience with relief work has been the 
same as that of America. Such work in Lancashire in 1863, 

^Socialistic Poor Relief in France. The readiness of the socialists to 
have the state help people is shown by their loose and promiscuous out-door 
relief in many French towns of which their party has lately gained control. 
Free bread is delivered to the poor, that they may avoid the disgrace of 
calling for it, large sums are voted to feed school children, the poor in 
almshouses are given pin money, and various similar grants are made. A 
socialist said to Mr. Brooks in triumph: "The bourgeois spent only 50,000 
francs on the poor, but we spent 150,000." But seeing the end of their 
tether, a socialist of some experience in public office said: "Oh, you know 
everybody is crazy on the subject of caring for the poor; we have all got 
our lesson still to learn." (Brooks, 294.) The Belgian socialists, having 
learned by fifteen years of success in cooperative business the necessity of 
rent, interest and profits, and of wages graded to value of work, are teach- 
ing thrift, and have made theirs a sensible reform party, uniting with other 
reforming forces to have the state fit the people for self help, and to do 
itself only what it clearly can do best, and abandoning hopes of changing 
rapidly or very largely, except in cooperation, the present system of private 
production and competition. 

In Australia. The report for 1901 of the New South Wales employ- 
ment commission indicates the effects of doing for people what they ought 
to do for themselves, showing that so well are the shiftless provided for 
that there is a weakening of the inducement to get and hold jobs. Appli- 
cants for work numbered 10,501; offers of work 16,172, accepted in 7,899 
cases, rejected in 3,237, and in 5,036 cases no reply was received. Of the 
jobs accepted 3,175 were for less than a month, and 1,454 of them were 
deserted. Failure of 3,485 registrants to give further attention to their ap- 
plications indicates use by beggars of registration certificates to prove that 
they want work when they do not. The commission's methods include a 
casual labor farm on the cooperative basis, public jobs let to cooperative 
workers, a labor refuge like the Chicago lodging house, emergency work 
for quick relief, and advancing of railway fare, guaranteeing store credit, 
and various other forms of assistance. The commission recommends a public 
farm for long occupancy, assisted settlement on state land under permanent 
lease, and a compulsory labor colony for vagrants. (U. S. Labor Bulletin 
No. 43.) During 1893-6 various attempts to set up thousands of unem- 
ployed in cooperative farming were made by Australian states, at heavy 
cost in money, and perhaps heavier cost in deepening the dependence of 
people already disposed to look to the state for a living. (See H. D. Lloyd's 
"Newest England.") 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 623 

at the time of the cotton famine caused by the American Civil 
War, was well managed by the local poor authorities, as in 
Chicago in 1893, and results were satisfactory, useful work 
being done at proper cost, $6,000,000 being spent, and pauper- 
ism being prevented with three times as many as the number 
thus employed. But the opposite was true of relief work in 
several Irish famines, and in a few English cities in 1893-94, 
money being paid to men who made little pretense of earning it/ 

'G. Drage, "The Labor Problem." 

Progress in Solving the Problem of the Unemployed. Full accounts 
of the relief work of 1893-94 were published in American Social Science 
Journal. The plan outlined in the text as to systematic provision for the 
unemployed is practically that of John Graham Brooks, in Pamphlet 122 
of American Academy of Political Science, Philadelphia. Experience with 
the labor colonies of Holland and Germany has shown that to keep vagrants 
in them compulsion must be used, as in a reform school. A change is being 
made in the common practice by which city police departments, especially 
in winter, admit tramps for one night to a room in which they sleep without 
bedding, in bunks and on the floor. Such free lodging has been abolished in 
New York, Boston, and other cities, and a work test substituted. Before this 
recent change in Chicago that city was "a winter Mecca for the nation's 
tramps, because the mayor clung to the old sentimental idea of mendicancy, 
and threw the police stations open to beggars at the first chilling blasts of 
December." The unfortunate travelers whom overseers of the poor assist 
with railway tickets for a part of their journey do not include strong men 
wandering aimlessly, but are disabled people going to relatives. 

The Chicago City Lodging House in 1901, during its first three months, 
received over 6,000 men, 25 to 140 per night, assisting 1,206 into employ- 
ment, of whom about 70 per cent were permanently replaced in the ranks 
of industry. In the morning each new lodger, whose story for the detailed 
record card seems truthful, and who seems to have fair chances of getting 
work that day, is excused from working three hours on the streets ; but in the 
superintendent's address all are warned that none whose story proves false 
will ever be admitted again. Those who get work leave the house, and 
those who work well the three hours are sent to a list of firms, who com- 
mendably aid the movement by hiring the men they need, the others being 
given the day to seek work themselves. A man who seems to be honestly 
seeking work is given four nights of lodging, with supper and breakfast 
of coffee and bread, for which he pays with the three hours of labor. Then 
he is not admitted again until a month has passed. Men are not permitted 
to lounge at the house during the day; they are then supposed to be seeking 
work. The house contains 225 single beds, with good bath facilities, which 
the men are required to use. Those refusing to work are arrested for 
vagrancy, ability to work being passed upon by a physician. The sick or 



624 Getting a Living. 

crippled are put in touch with charitable agencies. The Philadelphia 
authorities opened in 1901 a fine lodging house of this kind that was built 
by a philanthropist. It includes a small dormitory for women. 

The American Authority on the Subject of Tramps, Prof. J. J. Mc- 
Cook of Hartford, estimated in 1899 {Independent, March 13, 1902), that 
the tramps in the United States then numbered 56,000. His estimate was 
based upon the daily averages at the police lodging houses of Massachusetts. 
He has personally studied the careers of 1,349 tramps. Since 1870 tramps 
have increased nearly four times faster than the population. There was a 
great increase of tramps during the two depressions beginning in 1873 ^^^ 
1893, but only a small decrease when good times returned in 1879 and 1898. 
Men acquire the tramping habit and prefer it to working. As is well 
known, many a tramp is a bright man, and a superior worker for a short 
time. Because the tramp is "almost never married, and almost always a 
drunkard," he is the first man discharged when business slackens. For each 
of the 56,000 the annual cost to the people, for arrests and maintenance, is 
not less than $200. Many of the tramps are active centres of disease and 
crime. Prof. McCook recommends stopping the tramp nuisance (i) by in- 
terfering with their becoming drunkards; (2) by encouraging or compelling 
thrift; (3) by breaking up train jumping; (4) by stopping indiscriminate 
charity; (5) by applying scientific principles to their reformation. They 
should be both punished and made better, the institutional treatment most 
likely to cure being also most likely to punish. Of course, to such treatment 
they strenuously object. Reformatories seem to be effective with about 
three-fourths of ordinary felons. Because not stopped by law, tramping 
is increasing also in England. 

In the Massachusetts Report of 1895 on the Unemployed, based 
on thorough investigation, the commission recommended provision of food 
and lodging by overseers of the poor in every town for wa3^farers, with a 
demand for work as payment, refusal to work to be prima facie evidence 
of tramping, for which easier conviction was asked. The commission also 
recommended that the overseer be punished for failure to demand work of 
the wayfarer; that persons riding on freight trains without permit be punish- 
ed as tramps; that a state institution be established for reforming vagrants 
under thirty years of age ; that in letting contracts care be taken to prevent 
introduction of large gangs of non-resident workers, especially aliens, unless 
there be clear proof of a lack of home labor at a fair m?'rket price. Other 
recommendations were for free employment offices, industrial education, re- 
striction of immigration, fewer hours of work, and removal from city to 
country. The commission believed that not over one in ten of those applying 
for relief in ordinary times is deserving, and that the other nine will not 
face a work test. The report is regarded as a masterly work, and the 
conclusions as sound. 

Before the Industrial Commission in 1901 (Vol. XIV.) R. A. Woods, 
a Boston authority on slum settlements, said tramping can be abolished — 
that tramps go round the many Massachusetts towns that followed the rec- 



The Poor and the Unemployed. 62^^ 

ommendation of 1895 as to a work test. Prof. Commons said the state farm, 
etc., described above, had practically abolished begging in parts of Ger- 
many ; that unionism's minimum wage, and opposition to working for less 
by those unable to earn it (page 391), increases the problem of unemploy- 
ment; that the Seattle employment office's success was under an unsalaried 
committee of business men, in touch with employers, and that it had no 
political appointees selected to please the labor or some other class of voters ; 
that over a large district in New York the interest aroused by Cornell's 
scientific farming (page 318) kept people contented on farms during the 
late hard times. For officials to plan ahead, having little public work 
done in good times and much in bad (recommended in testimony by W. F. 
Willoughby and in books by Prof. Ely), would greatly relieve unemploy- 
ment, and secure public gain from low prices ; but under the present social- 
ist and unionist demand for public favor to workers, and under the political 
subservience to them, such a policy in public work would doubtless increase 
dependence and misery, as would the provision (urged in the Massachu- 
setts legislature in 1902 and again in 1903) of a fund in cities for public 
work in hard times, and of extra work then on roads. Forbidding public 
contractors to hire non-residents unless necessary would also prevent harm- 
ful moving (New York canal contractors left their Italians on local char- 
ity), but greater honesty in officials would be needed to avoid monopoly 
favor of home workers. 

The Part to be Played by Trade Unions. In Prof. J. B. Clark's 
prophecy for the twentieth century {Atlantic, Jan. 1902), he predicts that 
the public industrial school, described above, will solve the problem of the 
unemployed. The cause for a contest with labor unions over such industrial 
schools — a contest expected by Mr. Brooks and Prof. Clark — will, it is to 
be hoped, disappear by reason of the growth of fairness and common sense 
among workingmen. Their contention in this matter, as shown in the chap- 
ter on prison labor, is an utter delusion. Moreover, th^ problem of the 
unemployed, which in recent years was largely caused by spread of a social- 
istic demand for and hope of help from the public, may in many places be 
disposed of without the industrial schools by choosing the more level-headed 
labor unionists for official positions among the poor authorities. Such a 
selection, recommended by Mr. Brooks, is being made to some extent. It 
brings the political power of the working class to the support of sound 
methods, in weeding out the unworthy, and in reducing help to the minimum. 
It democratically gives the poor a part in the charity of the public in which 
as voters they are a power, and removes their excusable hostility toward 
being helped as inferiors and failures by an upper class choosing self-right- 
eously to look down on them in pity. Labor leaders, learning by experience 
as poor law officials that only by each man's looking out for himself can 
civilization exist, will hold in abeyance the socialistic delusions that are 
always coming to the surface in unionism, and which will ever continue to 
occur in the untrained thinking of the wage worker. Displacing error 
with sound knowledge in the minds of labor leaders, and granting in law 
40 



626 Getting a Living. 

and opinion the proper demands of trade unions, will go far toward solving 
the problem of the unemployed in the effectual way of self-reliance and 
thrift. 

But in England the State Must Do Much More. For rescuing the 
slum people in America, in view of cheapness of food and land, with the 
ease of finding work, it seems wisest for the state to depend as at present on 
self-help, developed under school, health, and factory laws, and not to do 
much in carrying people out to state farm colonies. In England, however, 
hundreds of thousands, from partial starvation and idleness, are too weak 
in body, mind, and habit to escape from their misery, into which many of 
them were born ; and besides, for most of them, though they were stronger, 
access to land or to better work would be lacking. The change from tillage 
to pasturage, with other causes, moves men from country to city until a great 
horde is barely kept alive with casual jobs. For these self-help is not to 
be thought of, and for their rescue philanthropy is feeble. Only the state 
(locally and nationally) is sufficient, and its means must consist mainly of 
getting the poor on to land. In General Booth's plan there are large 
possibilities — from the lowest class of waste humanity his Salvation Army, 
at its farm colony in England, raises two out of three to permanent self- 
support. {Westminster Revieiv, April, 1903). Apparently the British 
public is neglectful of its duty in delaying to do something effectual for 
the submerged tenth. To get their poor from the slums to the country is 
now the main effort of charity among New York Jews. Some of their farm 
colonies in South Jersey, formed of the poorest and weakest Jews from 
Russia, have attained success (page 33). (See Commander Booth Tucker's 
account of Salvation Army colonies, U. S. Labor Bulletin, Sept. 1903.) 

Since the above was written the British government, in Sept. 1903, with 
hearty approval by the public, has appointed a commission to inquire into 
the alleged deterioration of the lower classes. In Parliament it was said 
that 60,000 children in London schools are physically unfit for instruction; 
that one out of every three men applying as recruits for the army had to 
be rejected; and that the nation's military and industrial future is seriously 
threatened. 

Increase of Pauperism. Dr. Washington Gladden, in his valuable little 
book of 1902, "Social Salvation," says that in America since 1865, mainly 
because of impulsive giving and of increase of charitable institutions (we 
may ask, Is not the pension system chief among these?) — dependents have 
increased much faster than the population, with fearful loss of manhood 
and with pauperization of multitudes. From careless giving alone the 
amount of injury is appalling. To Dr. Gladden's city many self-supporters 
have been drawn from the country by a public relief given without investi- 
gation and largely from political motives. But scientific charity has made 
marked progress. In a number of the larger cities out-door relief from the 
city has been abolished, and with a decrease at some places of the number 
in almshouses. Organized charity has had encouraging success in sending 
out unpaid friendly visitors to awaken hope and courage. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
LOW WAGES AND VICE. 

An Oft-Repeated Assertion of the Socialists, who are fol- 
lowed in this idea by many trade unionists, is that low wages, 
and the general hardness of life under the self-direction of the 
present competitive system, are the all-inclusive cause of vice 
and crime. This effort to throw all the blame on society, and to 
relieve the worker from responsibility for his own acts, is in 
harmony with the socialistic doctrine that the state should pro- 
vide every person with work and a fair living, not holding his 
reward closely to the value of his product. Though far less 
unsound than the latter doctrine, this view of low wages as a 
cause is untrue in the main. Rocky Mountain mining camps, 
especially while new, are noted on the one hand for the highest 
wages in the world, and on the other hand for drinking, gamb- 
ling, shooting, and licentiousness. Canadian farming hamlets, 
on the contrary, and small villages in different parts of Europe, 
have very low wages, yet are noted for the moral and law- 
abiding character of their people. In these cases the high 
wages are partly the cause of bad morals, attracting bad people, 
Avhose badness arose in no way from low wages in the past, and 
affording bad character means of gratification; while the low 
wages are partly the cause of good morals, leading the people 
to live frugal and contented lives, and placing many temptations 
beyond their reach. 

Which Comes First— the Low Wages or the Vice? Bad 
people in the slums who were born there grew up in vice before 
they had wages. The drifting of their parents into the slums, 
in the case of European immigrants, was generally due to low 
wages and consequent need of low rents, but these low wages 
in turn were due to inability to earn more, or to ignorance of 
better means of living. Some of the native parents in the 
slums drifted into them for the same reasons. Their ineffi- 

(627) 



628 Getting a Living. 

ciency and ignorance were both deepened as a rule by their 
previous low wages, but generally, at any place in the chain of 
causes, the inefficiency was rather the cause of the low wages 
than vice versa. Inefficiency lowers wages quickly and surely, 
while low wages lessen efficiency slowly and somewhat uncer- 
tainly. Many parents were drawn into the slums by habits of 
vice acquired while living elsewhere. Falling into this vice 
was mainly due in some cases to the discouragement of low 
wages as a first cause, but these cases were probably very 
few. Hope and energy to escape from low wages, by getting 
a better position or moving away, are active in the strong char- 
acter while yet free from bad habits. The dull character is not 
troubled by low wages, being contented with little. The weak 
character, who wants much he is unwilling to work for patient- 
ly, is the one who drinks, gambles or embezzles because his 
wages are low. He, however, is not found among the poor, but 
in the salaried classes, up to those whose income is large. 

Temptation as the Cause. And with him the ruin is usually 
caused by the presence of attractive temptation. Away from it 
his wants would be fewer and more controllable. While a long 
work day, exhausting the body, and low wages, weakening hope 
for better things, do undoubtedly cause much drinking, and 
much relaxation of effort to do right, it is probably true that 
only a small proportion of the total drunkenness and crime in 
America was caused from the start, or was materially pro- 
moted, by low wages.^ In country places the slum people would 
be happy with low wages if they had never known the city. 
Food and rent are cheaper in the country, but under wages 
lower in perhaps not less than the same proportion. Dealings 
with one another are slower and less strict than in the city, but 
this is largely because bad character is not present to require 
strictness, and the advantages of easy dealing are well balanced 
by its effect to lessen wages, and the values received in general 

^A larger proportion was due to prolonged idleness in time of depression. 
By a careful investigation in 76 towns of Connecticut Prof. McCook found 
that 71 per cent of the paupers were made paupers by drunkenness, and that 
it was the cause of 65 per cent of the pauper expense, but that the idea 
of poverty as the cause and drink as the effect was there hardly worthy 
of a thought, less than half a dozen cases of inebriety being thus caused. 
{Social Science Journal, 1894.) 



Low Wages and Vice. 629 

exchange. In fact, it is by the easy deaHng that much of the 
country people's unrehabiHty in paying and working is caused. 
Their contentment and good morals, therefore, must be chiefly 
due to the absence of temptation, both from themselves and 
from their fathers. Starting saloons and dance halls would 
bring drunkenness and crime to the country too — to the most 
moral community that ever existed, whose people had not been 
educated in taste and principle to a level above the force of 
such temptation. Fortunately, in moral communities of plain 
people, there is usually a public sentiment that keeps saloons 
away. 

For the Temptation Who is Responsible? But the preva- 
lence of drunkenness among Russian peasants, and the pres- 
ence of so many drinking places, are probably due mainly to 
special appetite arising from their extreme poverty and igno- 
rance, which are dragging them lower and making them des- 
perate. Drinking, their only pleasure, drowns their misery for 
a time. The public duty there is to lighten their taxation, and 
to educate and encourage them to better things. With them the 
evil was mainly caused by society's apparently willful oppres- 
sion, in onerous taxation, and in stern repression of aspirations 
for the liberty enjoyed in other countries. The blame deserved 
by the ruling class in Russia depends upon how far they ought 
to have known and followed better policies, and how far they 
have shut their eyes to the example of other lands and have 
clung unscrupulously to their privileges. 

As to the Misery in American Slums, which similarly drags 
people lower — the bad air, bad food, and overcrowding that 
make morality almost impossible — society is responsible, not by 
any form of oppression or of withholding (or to only a slight 
extent at most, in men's freedom and ability here to move after 
better v*^ages), but in failure to bring about more promptly 
many things that admittedly ought to be done for improving 
the conditions of life among those who need to be lifted up. 
These things include the reforms previously outlined (page 
352), besides better laws for control of tenements and factories, 
for sanitation and education, and for diminishing the number 
of saloons and bawdy houses. In these ways knowledge and 
efficiency may be increased, wages raised, taxes and prices low- 
ered, and morality promoted. For the delay in bringing about 



630 Getting a Living. 

the reforms the blame is shared by all classes. The slum peo- 
ple themselves are to blame, for their voting almost solidly for 
the boss, who favors or bribes them with drinks and jobs, and 
various kindnesses, but whose corruption is the chief cause of 
their loss from poor schools, bad housing, etc. They give him 
his power, and he in turn gives them their misery, deepening 
and spreading the bad conditions of which they as socialists 
complain. The trade unionists are to blame, for their readiness 
to tax the public for class benefit (page 545), which fault of 
theirs is perhaps the main cause of the rightful delay in estab- 
lishing public ownership of municipal monopolies. The middle 
class are to blame, for their blind following of party, without 
effort to know the truth and to exert influence for the public 
good. The leading captains of industry are to blame, who^, 
with the energy by which they secure unfair gains through 
monopoly, could bring about quickly most of the needed re- 
forms, and who probably would do so if the people in general 
were more ready to properly honor and reward public spirit, 
and less ready, in their own indolence or dishonesty, to be 
deceived and cheated. Many of these employers are also to 
blame for lowering -the morals of their workers by treating 
them with unfair harshness. By the opposite policy, supplying 
healthy dwellings at low rent, and encouraging his workers in 
many ways, Robert Owen made his mill a great success, and 
changed New Lanark from a place of squalor and crime into a 
happy and moral community. 

For Not Using Better the Light it Has, one class seems to 
be as much in fault as another. To the much that is given to 
the rich and intelligent their performance of duty as a class 
reaches a proportion fully as high, no doubt, as that between 
the receiving and performing of the poor. For every class the 
most fruitful line of effort, it seems, lies in striving to look 
through short-sighted self-interest to the good of the public, 
one's self included, and in such thinking and voting as will lead 
masterful men to devote themselves to its promotion. They 
will do this, and will rapidly raise government and business 
toward perfection, when those in every class who form prevail- 
ing public opinion turn away, each for himself, from the present 
heedless self-seeking — and from the present suspicion or con- 
tempt for the public spirited — to recognize as, the most desirable 



Low Wages and Vice. 631 

success, not the attainment of wealth and power for one's self, 
regardless of others, but the rendering of valuable services to 
society. The public evils complained of are exactly what the 
people make them, or permit them to become. Each man is to 
blame for them so far as they are continued by his failure to do 
his best to conform his thinking and voting to the right. The 
individual mind is the fountain of public control. Only so far 
as men get pure themselves can there be purity in politics and 
industry. With the whole heart must purity be sought, but in 
the attainment of it there is great reward.^ 

The First Cause of All Vice Everywhere, therefore, is the 
evil born in the nature of people. At least a little sinfulness is 
doubtless to be observed in everyone. This truth parents and 
school teachers have no need to learn from theology.^ By 
changed heredity less of evil is received with birth when one 
generation after another improves its character. The evil 
tendency of one's nature is effectively overcome by many under 
the power of religion, and by some apart from religion through 
exercise of will, assisted usually by a change of influences. That 
which arouses inborn evil tendencies is temptation. Education 
and culture will lift one above the temptations of one grade of 
life, but into the temptations of another grade. Settled habits of 
morality, through which few temptations penetrate, may be 
formed in one grade of culture about as well as in another. The 
standard of morality may be high where wages are low if the 
people's support is sufficient to maintain strength, and if the 

^"I believe that ignorance and suffering might be lessened to an incalcula- 
ble extent, and that many an Eden, beauteous in flowers and rich in fruits, 
might be raised up in the waste wilderness which spreads before us. But no 
class can do that. The class which has hitherto ruled in Great Britain has 
failed miserabl3\ It revels in power and wealth, while at its feet, a terrible 
peril for its future, lies the multitude which it has neglected. If a class has 
failed, let us try the nation. That is our faith, that is our purpose, that 
Is our cry — let us try the nation." (John Bright.) But with all the classes 
composing the nation, as with the higher class ruling alone, there must be 
a readiness to deny self and do the right. 

"Mr. F. H. Wines, perhaps the foremost American criminologist, concludes 
that the root of crime is In character, not in circumstance. This accords 
with the words of Christ, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder?," 
and with the fact that many in a bad environment do well while many 
in a good environment do ill. 



632 Getting a Living. 

prevalent spirit includes industry, frugality, contentment and 
morality. Idleness is the greatest breeder of vice and crime, 
whether the living be scanty or liberal, the mind crude or cul- 
tured. Hence, in times of depression, when many are unem- 
ployed, vice and crime increase, another reason for crime being 
the pressure of hunger and cold. The amount of crime is 
largest when in addition to idleness and want the restraining ties 
of home are broken, and hope gives way to despair. This was 
the case when several centuries ago England was filled with 
vagrants by confiscation of church lands and the scattering of 
their occupants. Thieving among colored people in the South 
springs from the habits and moral standards developed in slav- 
ery, and made worse by present idleness and lack of worthy 
ambition. The relation of idleness to crime is indicated by the 
proportion of convicts (above three-fourths usually) who were 
brought up to no regular trade or occupation.^ Many of the 
worst criminals, however, including the sharpest and most 
dangerous in crimes against property, were born with an almost 
conscienceless disposition toward criminality, which is likely to 
lead into crime without other favoring conditions. The very 
poor lack the intelligence and opportunity to commit such 
crimes as forging, and they lack the energy required for rob- 
bery or burglary, or even for stealing above the grade of petit 
larceny. And in America they are at least no more given to 
drunkenness than are several of the grades next above them in 
wages, while in freedom from gambling, and in devotion to 
family ties, they are probably better than the middle and upper 
classes. 

Low Wag^es as the? Ruin of Working Girls. No doubt some 
American working girls sell their virtue because their wages, 
supposed by them at first to be sufficient, prove too low to live 

^The proportion is about the same with paupers. Of 1759 inmates of 
Elmira Reformatory only 19 per cent had done mechanical work. One Phila- 
delphia prison record showed that -only a little over 5 per cent had learned 
a trade. Mr. F. H. Wines' report for 1890 showed that of the 6,958 men 
who had committed homicide in this country those said to have no trade were 
74 per cent. As to the effects of idleness, the commitments from New York 
city to Blackwell's Island jail, for vagrancy and intoxication, were in 
January, 1900, but half the number in the same month of the dull year 1896. 
Irregular work caused much of the demoralization of hard coal miners. 



Low Wages and Vice. 633 

upon in reasonable comfort. But it is probable that a much 
larger number of them agree or continue to work for too low 
wages because an additional income from selling their virtue is 
already obtained or expected. It was thus that wages were 
brought below a living rate by the ease of securing an allowance 
under the old poor law in England, and that wages are now 
lowered by tips. Most of those factory and office girls who fall 
from virtue are led by exceptional susceptibility to temptation, 
and perhaps most of these belong in the brighter class of minds 
that by effort can usually earn a fair support. When avoidable, 
a girl should never make an attempt to live on insufficient 
wages, and when forced to them should escape quickly before 
being exposed too long to temptation. In a strange city any 
girl can get from the Young Women's Christian Association 
the advice and assistance that will enable her to obtain a safe 
living. Girls who have learned to work well come rarely 
to a condition of pressing need. The home community is the 
place for all girls who are not fully able to take care of them- 
selves. Those whose ability is not clear should never go to a 
strange city to work unless they have friends there to assist 
them. Though Professor Smart seems to think that the pitiful 
ten-shilling pay of working girls in many British industries has 
a sad relation to falls from virtue into the oldest trade in the 
world, and though Professor Schaffle said ''The rate of prosti- 
tution in London rises and falls with the price of bread," it 
would seem that amid the helpful influences of the home town, 
with the ready openings into domestic service, girls lacking in 
decision of character might even at ten-shilling pay retain their 
virtue there. But public opinion should not rest until, by the 
methods previously outlined (pages 483, 511) the wages of 
British girls were raised to a self-supporting level; nor should 
it rest anywhere until servants were protected against tempta- 
tion, by increasing their reserve of self-respect, and by holding 
responsible the families they serve. ^ 

^By one inquiry in America 47 per cent of a number of prostitutes had 
been servants. {American Journal Sociology, March, 1903, p. 705.) R. A. 
Woods, social settlement worker in Boston, said to the Industrial Commis- 
sion (Vol. XIV.) that instances of women driven to sin by want are com- 
paratively rare, but that those with low pay, in the bad surroundings of 
city life, are subject to specially great temptation. 



634 Getting a Living. 

Dullness Rather Than Vice. Low pay in England before 
the time of rapid working machinery made people slow and 
dull, as it does now in backward communities, but not criminal, 
or specially wicked, where steady industry was the rule, and 
temptation not prevalent. The gross drunkenness — in some 
trades habitual for one or two days each week — which toward 
the end of the eighteenth century led some observers to regard 
leisure and surplus income as sources of ruin to wage workers,^ 
seems to have been confined to the higher paid skilled men. 
Higher wages coming in a later period to the poorly paid were 
first spent by many in drunkenness and in increase of numbers, 
before these had begun a hopeful effort to raise their standard 
of living.^ It is a habit of shiftless work that makes many of 

^Petty and Temple, both writing about the year 1675, upheld the need 
for long work days, and for a high tax on consumption to raise prices of 
food, in order that people might be forced to work, and be kept from lazi- 
ness and idleness. Probably this doctrine was true as to low character 
workers of that day. Fisher Ames gave this as a reason for the -American 
protective tariff of 1790. Brassey, the noted contractor, found that in 
England high pay so increased efficiency as to lower cost of labor, but that 
it made the ambitionless people of India do less than with low pay. It was 
this inability to overcome indolence, and to foresee and provide for the 
future, that has always led American Indians, like savages in general, to 
suffer and starve in winter, and that now leads Filipinos and South African 
natives to refuse to work at any price, giving rise to the present demand 
of employers for Chinese, and to their temptation everywhere to use some 
force in controlling uncivilized natives. Because of this aversion to labor, 
slavery, despite its horrors, is regarded as having been necessary as an 
early step toward civilization, which, even in a period lasting to the pres- 
ent, it will largely result in bringing to the black race of Africa. 

^Poverty as a Spur Toward Achievement. The ex- governor of New 
York who, in a Lincoln day address in 1903, represented life in a small hut, 
under deep poverty, with "every working hour filled with struggle," as ad- 
vantageous for development of character, must have been over-impressed 
with the tendency of wealth to turn the young to luxury. By nature some 
hardness in conditions of life is necessary to effort, but the less of such 
stimulus people train themselves to require, the less energy they spend in 
surmounting obstructions, and the more they have left for positive achieve- 
ment. Perhaps the progress of the Hollanders might have been still great- 
er if, in a more fertile land as well located, they had been led more 
by opportunity and pushed less by necessity. Nobleness of aim and tenacity 
of purpose have doubtless been stifled in as many young men by the difficul- 
ties of poverty as by the pleasures of wealth. Fortunately, 



Low Wages and Vice. 635 

the Southern blacks poor, giving them small crops, or irregular 
wages, and leading not a few to steal ; though these bad effects 
of such work make them less able to rise above it. For rea- 
sons not due to their own fault, especially the effect of slavery 
to repress self-reliance and ambition, their desire for better 
things is not accompanied by the necessary foresight and indus- 
try. Crime and vice are far less common among the ignorant 
but patient-working blacks of the old type than among others 
knowing more and having more desires. Education gives a 
person power, but often fails to improve his morals, especially 
when he is not working regularly and contentedly. He is then 
more dangerous than while he was ignorant. The Canadian 
farming communities that are unsurpassed in the world for 

By Valuing Qualities Rightly — frowning on idle luxury and commend- 
ing worthy industry — society can largely abolish the need for hardness of 
conditions, substituting as a. developer of character the hardness in am- 
bitious effort. Mr. Lincoln's life was highly honorable to him, but to re- 
tain the adverse conditions under which he struggled would now be 
discreditable to society. Under the highest attainable average of well- 
being, which the socialists rightly demand, we may have as the type Mr, 
Gladstone or Mr. Roosevelt, born wealthy but entering upon achievement 
at once on reaching manhood — not wasting energy over difficulties, but using 
all advantages of opportunity. In old and crowded England many persons 
of talent. Prof. Marshall thinks, are kept down by lack of opportunity to 
reach the higher work they are fitted for. But there are not many such, it 
seems, under America's freedom from custom or caste, and her changeful, 
progressive life. Here the circumstances must be bad indeed to keep the 
boy who excels in school from likewise getting ahead afterward, though of 
course better opportunities would greatly raise the average of attainment. 
Yet even though wealth be diffused among all. Prof. Gunton seems to go too 
far in his idea that character, freedom, justice, and all things making for 
human welfare, increase in proportion to the people's consumption. The 
Scotch, the Hollanders, and the New Englanders have led the world in de- 
sirable achievement, but have stinted consumption closely. As consumption 
increases, and life grows easier, ideals and traits tend toward those which 
ruined Rome, which now appear under high living anywhere, and which 
in character and achievement place pleasant lands like Spain and Italy so 
far below harsh regions like Germaiiy and Britain. It seems more nearly 
correct to say that human welfare increases, not in proportion as a people 
consume wealth, but as they acquire and keep it, denying themselves the 
pleasures of luxury, and finding their enjoyment in turning their wealth 
into the material capital of best equipment for producing and living, and 
into the mental capital of highest intelligence, wisdom, and morality. 



636 Getting a Living. 

good morals have a fair average of common education, but not 
the keenness of mind that prevails in wicked cities. 

The Kind of Education Needed. It is desirable to have 
every person educated/ but not so as to turn him from that 
work which nature has made it best for him to do. The edu- 
cation ought to cause him to do his work better, and more 
contentedly also, if the work suits his capacity, or is leading on 
to what does suit, and ought not to cause dissatisfaction with 
any drudgery it does not fit one to escape otherwise than by self- 
adjustment. Denmark and Norway are noted for industry, 
contentment, and common j^ense, yet in Denmark only one 
person in a hundred of reading age cannot read and write. 
The new industrial education is teaching the Southern blacks 
to do the practical farming, laboring, and common mechanical 
work that are ready for them. Such work not only improves their 
living and increases their property, but occupies and contents 
their minds, shutting out temptation to indulge in idleness, 
licentiousness, and crime. As a rule education, to be good, 
must be good for something pretty close at hand. It is well 
for the most lowly to scale the heights of knowledge and cul- 
ture, but not until they have performed the practical duties so 
near and clear as to demand first attention, such duties as earn- 
ing or paying for the living they get.^ 

^One-sixth of the crime in the United States is committed by persons 
wholly illiterate, and another sixth by persons practically illiterate. (C. R. 
Henderson, "Delinquent Classes," 1893.) No doubt in these cases illiteracy 
is a reason for not having developed a conscience or a wisdom that re- 
strains from crime, and a reason for not having honest means of support. 
It is a cause of prostitution, as is servile work, precluding self-respect. 
^ ^A Wrong Idea of Freedom and of Education harmed the Southern 
Negroes. Not a few of even the more capable failed to realize that their 
new condition of freedom meant work as before, only harder in effort and 
more risky in results. Their first teachers, in the home missionary move- 
ment from the North, came with noble intentions, and endured much self- 
sacrifice, but were too much imbued with the old idea of education as liter- 
ary and as conventionally elevating, rather than as industrial and im- 
mediately useful in getting a living. The results were good in training 
up colored teachers and preachers, but were otherwise in turning many 
away from the common work in which they could best have served them- 
selves and society. During the first fifteen years after the war, in the 
Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, there were many excellent farm hands among 
the colored men brought up in slavery. Perhaps the new hope inspired by 



Low Wages and Vice. 637 

Education Will Not Take the Place of Religion, which is a 
deeply planted necessity of human nature. By no probable 
progress can many people ever be expected to reach John 
Tyndall's independent sufficiency of intellect; yet as he ad- 
vanced in years, and observed the feebleness of man's attain- 
ments in knowledge when compared with the infinities of the 
universe, he relaxed his attitude of doubt toward Christianity. 
Profound thinkers like him are reverential before the deep 
things of God. Very few except men of shallow or unbalanced 
mind regard them long with self-sufficiency. So long as men 
stand helpless before calamity and death, as apparently they are 
to stand always, they will realize a need for religion, and 
through it they will feel after God if haply they may find him. 
Moreover, under the vital connection of religion with the moral 
and hopeful seriousness necessary to the good and successful 

freedom strengthened their industry. But in late years there few colored 
people are hired on farms. They have nearly all drifted in the towns and 
cities, where many of them by choice do not work regularly enough for 
their own and the public good. Those who grew up after the war learned, 
as a rule, to dislike farm work, and proved unreliable in the country. Many 
of them now do well in the city, the railway, and the iron furnace occupa- 
tions that are open to colored men. A good account of the rise of the many 
industrial schools for colored people in the South, such as Hampton, and of 
the change in Negro education, is given in Re'vieiv of Re^ieius, Sept. 1900. 
Education and Wealth Production, in his testimony before the Indus- 
trial Commission (Vol. XV.) a college president showed that the per capita 
product of wealth in the different states varies in the same proportion with 
the average number of years of schooling the youth of the state receive, and 
concluded that the reason those states giving most education produce most 
wealth is that their workers are most intelligent. He seemed to overlook 
the product of the enormous capital in machinery of such states as Massa- 
chusetts, and to overlook the operation of machinery by ignorant foreign 
labor. Germany had thorough education in free schools long before Eng- 
land, but by reason of wars, together with lack of enterprise and hence of 
capital, Germany, until lately, was far behind England in wealth produc- 
tion. Of course, properly balanced education adds largely to working and 
managing efficiency, and hence to product and capital, and then the latter, 
by taxation, support education as they did at first by giving time from the 
struggle for food. Wise education makes enterprise, and enterprise, how- 
ever awakened, gives thirst for the knowledge it needs in its plans. The 
first essential for ris.e in well-being is desire for it, with purpose or ambition 
to attain it. These, by education, the state should do all it can to awaken 
and direct 



638 Getting a Living. 

life, a nation turns away from religion at its peril. "The great- 
est sophism is the belief that our land is safe so long as we 
teach our children to read, write, and figure. What is needed 
is development of conscience. Conscience creates good men, 
and good men save the state. . » . Science and philosophy are 
taking the place of religion. . . . To-day moral degeneration 
threatens our foundations."^ 

^Archbishop Ireland, 1901. 

Attempts to Discard Nature's Plans Lead Into Deep Water, as the 
socialists have learned from their desperate denial of all principles standing 
in their way. Their effort to rule out religion, because Christianity teaches 
love and duty between classes, instead of the bitter hatred by which social- 
ism hoped to bring about its revolution, was as unscientific as their effort to 
rule out objectionable laws of economics, such as the law that without in- 
jury to society workers cannot be paid more than they earn. Not assertions 
so pitiably futile as that of Marx when he said, "The idea of God must be 
destroyed, it is the keystone of a perverted civilization," — could the psalmist 
have had in mind when he wrote, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall 
laugh." To hope to rule out God from human thought and emotion is to 
imagine a vain thing indeed. On the same level with rejection of religion 
was the doctrine that in the socialistic state there must be no separate fam- 
ilies, because in marriage there would be inequality in possession of desirable 
wives, and because members of a family would work for one another instead 
of for the people as a whole. Here there was a desire to go back beyond the 
barbarous tribe to the lowest stage of the human herd. Without the family, 
the mainstay of character, there could not be sufficient justice and morality 
for a better condition than the herd's savagery. 

Edward Bellamy, despite proof to the contrary in the failure of scores 
of communistic societies (page 93), portrayed a future socialism in which 
industry and prudence were to be universal, together with justice enforced 
by little else than one's own desire to do right. He might almost as well 
have continued his imaginary transformation of earth into heaven by hav- 
ing his people live without work from the spontaneous product of trees 
yielding each month twelve kinds of fruit. Even for dividing the product 
— easy enough under the hand-to-mouth living of the savage tribe — nothing 
better could be proposed for a civilized socialism forbidding private pro- 
duction for exchange (and hence having no measure of value in money), 
than the issue of goods from the public store according to each man's work- 
ing time. To prevent some from getting rich while others became poor, 
the state would have to regulate the simplest exchange, as the parent must 
first approve the little boy's trading of his knife. Howeyer, these fantastic 
ideas, long propagated by the ablest socialists in Europe, have been mainly 
given up during the last five years, since socialistic parties there, by 



Lozv Wages and Vice. 639 

gaining some power in government, have passed from dream theory to 
actual practice. Belgian socialists, in their cooperative enterprises, have 
even learned the unsoundness of their opposition to piece work, and of their 
demand for a guaranteed minimum wage. Considerate cooperation by 
other parties with socialism, in its proper demands for factory laws, etc., 
is maKing it a useful force in Europe. (Brooks, "The Social Unrest.") 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
TRADE UNIONISM AND THE CHURCH. 

There is Respect of Persons With Men, as everyone knows 
too well. It cannot be expected that people will ordinarily care 
for one simply because he is a man, and equal to a king in 
certain rights before God. Men are so dealt with now, without 
regard to their social station, when in danger of fire or flood; 
and at all times by those churches and missionary societies 
which seek the lowest in the city slums, among the Southern 
blacks, and from the poorest caste in heathen lands. In the 
courts of law, too, and in the courts of public opinion, despite 
all the complaint to the contrary, any person, however poor, 
who earnestly strives to do the best he knows, taking duty as his 
own and not trying to shove it all off on to others, seldom fails 
to receive a measure of justice and considerateness that is 
creditable to society in the present imperfection of its knowl- 
edge. The tendency is to be too considerate, and to withhold 
from the guilty the punishment required by nature for society's 
protection. 

Desire to Get Benefit, Not to Give It, Will Prevail. But in 
the ordinary affairs of life it is inevitable that a person shall be 
sought after and regarded according to the money he spends — 
to the benefit he can confer on others with his patronage, his 
vote, or his social favor. Could he ask more? Otherwise the 
regard from people would be to help him, without a return 
from him to them. So to regard him would be commendable 
in them, showing a Christian spirit, but he would be wrong in 
demanding it. The Christian spirit of kindly helpfulness is a 
duty on him as much as on them. If one is too poor in money, 
influence, or simple kindliness, to help others like himself or 
more needy, he ought at least to try to leave for them such help 
as he himself might obtain. The spirit of demand is allowable 
only when one's need arises chiefly from the willful fault of 

(640) 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 641 

others. Whatever the wrongs in society, cases are rare with 
adults, in America at least, in which the person's own fault (in 
not making the slight effort that gives power to do better), or 
the fault of his parents, was not the main cause of his need, and 
in which individuals would not be difficult to find whose fault 
was sufficient to justify a demand of them. 

Even With the Church, It is Unavoidable and Right to 
Value More Than Others a member who can help the cause 
more with money, influence, or personal work. It is on these 
things that the church exists. It must care for them if it cares 
for its own work and its own life. Getting them comes 
before giving them. But the church is striving earnestly to 
get rid of the spirit of caste. Unlike fraternal orders, with 
which it is unfavorably compared, the church welcomes all 
grades of people, not having the black-ball method of restrict- 
ing membership to the socially desirable. Despite the over- 
readiness to resent the church's effort in ''missions," very few 
religious workers take among the poor the attitude of "You are 
bad and I am good," but on the contrary nearly all take un- 
affectedly the attitude of "You as well as I have a right to and 
are needed by the church, and have as good a right to consid- 
eration from it and from society." As to the reiterated claim 
that the church is unfriendly toward organized labor, express- 
ing a feeling derived perhaps from the hostility toward the 
church openly avowed by some branches of socialism — reliance 
for reply need not be placed on the fact that very few local 
church bodies in America, even those among poor people, could 
exist without the work and pecuniary support of employers and 
others not in active sympathy with unionism, nor on the fact 
that no society will ever take in a controversy a side contrary 
to that of its controlling membership, who may be as sincere in 
their opinions as those on the other side. Not only in order to 
exist at all must the church refrain from endorsing unionism, 
but it must refrain in order to remain Christian. Whatever 
unselfishness there may be in unionism's usual readiness to 
admit all to its fold, its spirit and method in dealing with those 
coming in its way, who may be and often are no less sincere 
than its own men, are not only contrary to settled principles of 
civilized law in violence and boycotting, but are widely at vari- 
ance with the teachings of Christ. Christianity condem.ns, not 
41 



642 Getting a Living. 

throwing off oppression by force, in revolution, but attempting 
to do so before peaceable and better means have been exhausted. 
Especially must Christianity, as well as patriotism and common 
sense, condemn indulging in force that is actuated by a spirit 
too bitter to be justified, that is evidently destined to retard the 
movement for which it is exerted, and that by defying authori- 
ties and usurping state functions amounts to anarchy. More- 
over, Christianity, unlike socialism, teaches repentance of one's 
own sin as the foundation of a better society — that each should 
first acknowledge and strive to overcome fault in himself, and 
be somewhat slow to charge fault on others; but it does not 
teach that the grace of patience under oppression should inter- 
fere with its removal where practicable. And in unionism's 
clear lack of harmony with Christianity it is unlikely that 
churches or church people have taken toward unionism an 
attitude approaching in hostility that of unionism toward the 
church.^ 

^"Resolved, that the convention desires herewith to state for the enlighten- 
ment of those over-zealous, bigoted misrepresentatives of a large member- 
ship of the church, that organized labor, as operated and controlled by the 
different unions of America, is to-day working for the good of humanit>% 
not only of its membership, but also of those who are not organized, more 
than all the religious denominations of America." (Convention of a 
Rocky Mountain state federation of labor, 1901.) Perhaps it would only 
be in the often radical and socialistic federation or trades council, whose 
object is to promote general unionism politically and otherwise, rhat such 
a resolution would be considered. In the unions of separate trades a usual 
rule forbids discussion of religion or party politics. 

"Whatever one may think of the wisdom of the labor men, and whatever 
defects their private life may hold, the modern world shows no persons more 
actuated by a love of humanity, rising to a religious ardor, more heroic in 
unflinching idealism, than certain in their ranks." (Vida D. Scudder, 
Atlantic Monthly, May, 1902.) 

"It is paradoxical that teachers and moralists should object to this action, 
since any personal renunciation for the good of the whole is socially, that 
is morally, advantageous. Especially in a sympathetic strike this subordina- 
tion of self to society is often shown in heroic proportions 'I am my 

brother's keeper' is a maxim adopted more thoroughly by the trade unions 

than by the churches A blackleg is the meanest creature in the trade 

union inferno because he is guilty of anti-social behavior." (John Martin, 
Int. Jour. Ethics, July, 1902.) 

"The chivalry, the moral heroism, the statesmanlike altruism of a sympa- 
thetic strike is as yet too high for the merely professional moralist to ap- 
preciate Is not such a strike the most notable product of that sense 

of solidarity or brotherhood which it is the aim of all systems of morality to 
develop?" (H. N. Casson, "Organized Self-Help.") 

"The trade unions have done more to improve the material and moral 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 643 

Unionism's Unselfishness. The paradoxical element in the 
quotations below is not the objection of moralists to unionism, 
but the making by capable writers of assertions so untenable. 
The unselfishness of unionism is not of a high order. The 
desire to extend the union's benefits to others is not chosen for 
their sake, but is forced on the union by the necessity of thus 
inducing others to refuse to work for less than the union rate. 
When help in return is no longer needed from outsiders, the 
tendency of the union is to exclude them, that those already in 
its fold may enjoy a monopoly (pages 302, 391). For one 
union's aid to another, by money contribution or sympathetic 
strike, a return of the same kind is impliedly promised ; and 
though such aid is ordinarily rendered for the general cause, 
without keeping accounts for future collection, each member, 
for his sympathetic giving or striking, is expected to be fully 
repaid by its effect to strengthen unionism as a whole, and 
hence to aid later in gaining demands that benefit him directly. 
Moreover, securing an increase of pay in one city enables the 
men of the same trade to secure it in other cities, and similarly 
benefits workers in trades related. If a strong national union 
is so essential to their permanent welfare as unionists claim, it 
was only self-interest that led the York glass workers to con- 
sent to the lowering of their local rate to a scale that could not 
he made so high for the whole of England. The same may be 
said of the action of northern Illinois coal miners, who assisted 
those in the richer mines of southern Illinois to get a rate of 
pay higher than their own. 

Present Sacrifice in Brotherhood, for a gain so near and 
clear as in these cases, involves morality, but of a low order. 
One of the great changes for the better in the church was its 
giving up of the practice of getting and holding people with 
sword and rack, many of whom, in not wanting to be kept as 
brothers, were more intelligent and conscientious than itself. 
Personal renunciation is fanatical, not heroic, when it rushes 
ahead recklessly in policies that are plainly wrong. The sym- 
pathetic strike, now condemned by many of the ablest labor 
leaders, can be carried to but a slight extent until it drops from 

and social well-being of the people of our country than all other institu- 
tions of modern society combined." (Samuel Gompers in an address, Fed- 
erationist, Sept. 1902, p. 519.) See pages 186-95 of this book. 



644 Getting a Living. 

the level of assisj;ance to the brotherhood to the level of coer- 
cion and oppression of the world outside. The non-unionist's 
behavior may not be anti-social, nor eventually anti-union, 
when he refuses to assist in a strike that is unjust (page 203). 
Christianity in this age, whatever the provocation, does not 
deem itself permitted by the spirit of Christ to indulge in hate 
and anathemas, as suggested by the blackleg inferno, and 
as made terribly real in the maiming and killing of scabs. Too 
often unionism's morality is anti-social itself, in being exerted, 
not for society as a whole, but only for its own members, and 
for those it hopes to gain. No doubt there was morality of 
this kind in the West Indian buccaneers. The ancient clan, 
heroic in defense of its own men but merciless toward out- 
siders, was more moral than many a trade union. The clan 
constituted the whole state, and hence had a right to coerce in 
governing, and it observed the best morality it had opportunity 
to know ; while the union is not the state, but is only a trade or 
a section, which attempts sometimes anarchically to impose its 
will on outsiders not desiring to join it, and often does so in 
the partisan spirit that refuses to perceive opposing truth. It 
could hardly be said that the United Mine Workers, when to 
unionize a competing Kentucky district they formed armed 
camps and resorted to violence, did so to benefit the contented 
body of men whom they thus tried to terrorize into the union. ^ 

^Labor Bulletin, July, 1902, p. 856. (See page 565 and Chap. XXVIII.) 
Has Unionism a Lofty Ideal? "To redress wrongs and raise the 
workers' standard of living might be an ideal if combined with generosity 
of feeling and rectitude of conduct. But we cannot think of effort by a class 
to gain material advantage for themselves, irrespective of the rights of 
their fellow beings, as in any sense idealistic." (The Independent, April 
30, 1903.) 

Was It Moral Power? The action of the American Railway Union, 
in taking up sympathetically the strike of the then unorganized men in the 
Pullman works, who had contributed nothing to its cause, is said by Miss 
Addams to have been certainly a manifestation of moral power. Not con- 
sidering the dangerous disregard of public rights, the practical insurrection — 
methods that would vitiate the best motive imaginable — this sympathetic 
strike did involve morality much higher than that of those Pacific islanders 
whose immediate selfishness makes them too treacherous to act together 
long. But it was not such morality as that which binds men in political 
parties, and in various public associations. If successful the Railway Union's 
sympathetic strike would have been the most effective means of gaining 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 645 

The Most Widely Inclusive Morality of Unionism appears 
in the American Federation's effort to organize every group 
that works for wages, down to the humblest, and in the helpful 

members and prestige, political power, and sympathetic aid for itself when 
needed later on. F. S. Hall, in his judicially fair book on sympathetic 
strikes, says that they arose from the workers' growth in foresight, not in 
ethics — that in such strikes the object is to obtain "future goods." 

For Intolerance and Tyranny no other force now appears in civilized 
lands that approaches unionism. This must be said under the purpose in this 
book to present truth that is whole. None of the facts or principles favoring 
unionism are omitted, nor is there any hesitancy to portray in its full black- 
ness the record of employers, nor to admit that several centuries ago the 
church, in its torturing and burning of tens of thousands, was perhaps, in 
effect if not by design, the most diabolical institution on earth. In fact, apart 
from unionism, intolerance has now practically disappeared. Nothing else 
now aims to force people's action against their will (much less to force their 
inner thoughts) where they have some shred of reason for their 
choice. In lightening its penalties for unquestioned offenses the state goes 
to extremes of mercy and liberality. Sunday laws are not enforced, and in 
seeking evidence against the worst dive keepers and saloonists policemen are 
not usually allowed to go secretly without uniform. Even in the American 
war in the Philippines, and in the British war in South Africa, few of the 
scrupulous could raise the cry of traitor against those citizens (largely trade 
unionists) v/ho denounced the war sincerely. Only in a nation's dire neces- 
sity would men's opinion of a war now be gagged. Those Massachusetts 
people who, for taking the side of England in the Revolution of 1775, were 
severely boycotted (a fact now cited by unionists), being unable to have 
wheat ground or any work done — would now, by the man of fair mind, be at 
least secretly respected for moral courage if they were conscientious ; and 
though their motives were bad, he would not join in unlawful persecution. 

Everywhere but in Unionism it is agreed that what we cannot have 
without the liberty of holding and of expressing honest opinion, and of 
exercising choice guaranteed by law, we had better not have at all. And 
American unionists have no excuse in lack of means. Workers all have 
votes, every candidate and party is trying to please them, and few are those 
who will not listen to their arguments. If the coercion is right which they 
now enforce by boycotting and terrorizing, there are certainly in the nine- 
tenths outside their fold, enough of honest people who will be convinced by 
reason, and who by joining them will make peaceable combination suffice, 
or who by voting with them will enable them to carry out their coercion 
lawfully through the state, the only coercive power, not anarchically as at 
present through mobs. 

The Fact that the State Does Not Dare to Enforce by Law, or to 
permit -private societies to enforce, the will of unionism concerning scabs and 
boycotting, since such enforcement would lead to the destruction of liberty 



646 Getting a Living. 

fraternity existing between it and similar federations through- 
out the world. This morality approaches perfection in so far 
as by rightly and wisely uplifting wage earners it aims to bene- 
fit all together. But it is to be feared that few unionists can 
look beyond personal and trade interests further than to the 
interests of the working class. The desire to include all is 
not chosen, but is forced on the federation by the necessity of 
thus securing widely united action in wage demands and in 
politics. A controlling socialistic policy, which passed largely 
into unionism, was to foment among the workers a hatred of 
the classes above them. The percentage of those whose ruling 
desire in unionism is to benefit all, with little or no thought of 
self or class, is undoubtedly small compared with those having 
this desire in their connection with political parties, and with 
various educational and philanthropic movements. Those lead- 
ers and other unionists who have this loftiness of motive are 
doubtless insignificant in number compared with those union- 
ists who, instead of desiring to benefit other classes, take an 
evil satisfaction in getting even with them. It is not a matter 
of intelligence. The dullest Christians that pretend to keep the 
faith spiritually do not permit themselves to give way to hatred 
of any one, however bad he may be. It is socialism that tries 
to weld the masses into brotherhood by preaching hatred of the 
classes. 

In the Highest Class to Itself is the Morality of Christian- 
ity. In it there is no other thought than disapproval for join- 
ing the church with the motive of getting business custom or 
social advantages. In the church's effort to reform the wicked, 
and to improve the morals of all, there is practically no thought 
of making the town a better place to carry on business, nor 
does the church itself think of foreign trade when it sends the 

in other respects until despotism was restored (under which the working 
class would fare worst of all), is proof of the untenableness of the unionist 
contention that the necessities of the case make intimidation and boycotting 
justifiable. Where unionism is righteous, and of value to the workers, 
not many of them will fail to perceive that it is, and those who do fail will 
be too dull, dishonest, or inefficient to retard its progress. So far as scabs 
are to be regarded as tax dodgers or traitors to a good cause, the eifect of 
that very fact on local opinion will hold them in check sufficiently, and 
without undermining the people's liberties. 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 647 

gospel to all the benighted lands it has resources to reach. To 
an extent very small during its history, and far smaller now, 
has the church taught the saving of one's self regardless of 
others. And over-wrought is the claim that the church is 
unduly concerned with other-worldliness — that it teaches the 
poor to be submissive under present injustice, since all things 
will be made right in heaven. In every age the church has 
been the chief friend of the poor and oppressed, and nearly 
everything done for their uplifting has been the work of people 
led by Christian motives. It is mainly by the labor and money 
of people in the church — already burdened with its support, 
and a vast majority. of them poor, the average salary of Ameri- 
can preachers (despite the high cost in time and money of their 
education) being less than the average income of mechanics^ 
— that the many movements for the uplifting of humanity are 
carried forward, and almost wholly for the benefit of people 
other than the givers. 

The Church's Objects and Methods, though glibly criti- 
cised, as usual in such cases, by those who bear none of its 
burdens, and who make little or no pretense to perform duties 
which, if binding on its members, are binding also on them- 
selves, — are what able and devoted men have found to be the 
best. Not only from Christ's example and teaching, but also 
from their own experience, they know that the church's mission 
is not to decide questions of paying tribute to Caesar, nor to be 
a judge and a divider when brothers quarrel over an inherit- 
ance, nor to head a party for reforming abuses in government 
or industry. Its mission is to continue Christ's work of making 
right the hearts of men individually, by showing them their 
Father and leading them to Him. Thus are imparted to them 
the spirit and motive that will lead them to act righteously in 
their political, industrial and all other relations. If the social- 
ists, ignoring individual character and depending on outward 

^That he knows this to be true is asserted by Rev. Charles Stelzle ("The 
Workingman and Social Problems," 119), a preacher and social settlement 
worker who was formerly a union machinist. He says there are "thousands 
who have spent fifteen years in preparation for their work as ministers who 
receive less than is paid an unskilled laborer." He must mean well paid 
laborers in city building trades, and the poorly paid ministers of weak 
churches. 



648 Getting a Living. 

cleansing through new laws, can thus uplift the people, they are 
welcome to do so as far as they can secure the necessary votes, 
and to favor enactment of good laws no people are more ready 
than those in the church. But the church has no reason to 
believe that before men individually have first been cleansed 
from sin in the heart can sound reforms in society be effected 
or continued, or v/ould the material comforts that absorb the 
thought of socialists have other than the not uncommon effect 
of good living to drag unregenerate character lower. To 
bring about the better social order there must first be purer 
desires in the hearts of the voters. Men who do not first love 
God will not go far in loving their neighbors. And apart from 
spirituality, Christian character lies at the basis of industrial 
progress in its effect to give self-mastery, foresight, and pru- 
dence — qualities that socialism belittles. 

The Claim That the Church Oifers Charity Instead of Jus- 
tice had some basis in truth a century ago, but even then 
it was beginning to build up, as fast as it was taught by 
science and experience, the splendid array of activities by 
which now, so far as its means permit, it furthers its main 
spiritual work by giving bodily health and industrial capacity 
to the poor in cities, in the South, and in heathen lands. 
In all this work there is now the minimum of charity in mere 
temporary relief, and the utmost effort, by properly influencing 
legislation as well as by personal teaching, to remove every form 
of injustice, and to place those aided in the best conditions of 
life. Every kind of movement for the good of humanity — 
religious, social, industrial, political — is now advanced by the 
church and by church people in the way by which their re- 
sources can be used with largest results. All the time hereto- 
fore they have done this to the best of their knowledge, but at 
present their knowledge is wide, and is fast passing beyond the 
rang'e of criticism.^ Now, as heretofore, if the Christian church 

^Not strange is It, under the usually heated feelings of the socialists, that 
they do not regard the fact that their praiseworthy ideal — of the best con- 
ditions for every person society can give him, of the preciousness of every 
life, however lowly — was derived from the Christianity they hate, of which 
their religion of socialism is really a perverted form, though noble in some 
respects. "Apart from Christ the natural tendency is to come back to the 
standpoint of the Greeks, and despise the masses." (Prof. R. T. Ely.) 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 649 

were eliminated from society, the workers would have scant 
hope of better things. Upon the church depends conscientious- 
ness, and upon this depends the award of justice to the humble 
at the cost of ceasing to gain from their oppression. The great 
religious revival in England under the Wesleys led to the 
general abolition of slavery,^ and from this to the present move- 

^C. D. Wright. "Ethical Phases of the Labor Question." 
In Charging Bad Motives to the Philanthropy of the Rich— a com- 
plaint now very common — there appears to be less truth than cynicism, or 
than socialistic exaggeration of evils. The teaching by Mr. Mallock that 
wealth needs moralizing and Christianizing, and by Mr. Carnegie that the 
rich man should conscientiously choose to be a trustee for society, can never 
justify wrongful acquisition, from which a heavy balance of evil is in- 
evitable, and must not be thought of as releasing the state and public opinion 
from doing the utmost to wisely guard, educate, and encourage the workers ; 
but such teaching is sound and true as to that largely preponderating 
portion of great wealth that is now rightly earned (page 354), and that will 
make some rich under any degree of social perfection. Not only would it 
be very difficult to find instances in which gifts from the rich to the church 
are in the remotest way conditioned against teaching or activity presumably 
objectionable to the donor, or instances in which the church blamably tries to 
please the rich, but in the philanthropy of the rich individually it would be 
difficult to find indications of improper motive, or lack of wisdom in the 
best sense. The claim that they offer a soothing charity of the soup-house 
kind, to keep the exploited quiet, is now practically groundless. As the 
church's teaching of the righteousness of Christ will expose any unrighteous- 
ness there may be in the rich (to a very small extent does the church now 
explain the latter away), so the colleges and libraries endowed by the rich 
give willingly a place to the teachings of socialists and other fault finders ; 
while few indeed are the professors who desire to give such teachings less 
than all the consideration they deserve. Fewer still are those who would 
take the risk before students of detection in bias, or who could be held to bias 
by the freely charged but improbable expectation that teaching is to accord 
with the interests of those by whom a university is endowed. In fact, the 
socialistic doctrines are mainly unworthy of Attention logically, but are given 
a place of importance because of willing admission that wrongs exist, and 
because of readiness to hear any proposal for their removal. University stu- 
dents as a rule, including many not poor (few of the great socialists have 
belonged to the working class), seem disposed to watch for bias in pro- 
fessors, and to go further than the truth justifies toward accepting social- 
ism, religious infidelity, and other forms of protest against orthodox doc- 
trines — because, perhaps, of a chivalrous readiness to defend what appears 
to be unduly and selfishly belittled, and because of the too great confidence 
of young men in their own judgment, with desire to use it independently. 
The Recent Affiliation of the Chicago Teachers with the local feder- 



650 Getting a Living. 

merit in all the progressive countries for giving every human 

creature the best opportunities for making the most of his life. 

That the Workers Hate the Church but Honor Christ is 

ation of labor was apparently a wise step, in view of the need of city teach- 
ers for influence from voters to avoid levies by bosses ; but certainly not rep- 
resentative, it would seem, was the teacher delegate who said their joining 
the labor federation was to save the democracy of the public schools — to save 
them from being made mere feeders of the universities, and from being led 
to teach economic and political principles inimical to trade unionism. The 
public high schools ought doubtless to prepare less for colleges and more 
for immediate bread winning, and ought to give more and freer instruction 
in trades than unionists would like, but if unionism has to choose its eco- 
nomics to suit, and objects to the university ideal and practice of searching 
for and adhering to the truth as it is, without fear or favor, then unionism 
will hold back or pull down its members, and the public it influences. Such 
a policy would prove the unionists to be too narrow-minded to utilize for 
the benefit of all classes their unionism's basis in truth acknowledged to be 
scientific and solid. • 

The Industrial Teaching Promoted by the Rich Protects Their Own 
Interests by enabling people to get along contentedly under the present 
system of society, but it also enables the latter to detect injustice and to 
avoid exploitation. In general the philanthropy of the rich allays public 
feeling against them, but, being so directed now as most effectively to give 
the masses intelligence and power, it will enable the latter to throw off the 
wrongs by which the rich get profit. In the far-sighted recognition among 
the rich that the masses, in order to do work and buy goods, must be 
allowed justice and prosperity, there is probably very little attempt by the 
rich to reduce the latter to feudalism. There is certainly no attempt by the 
rich to keep anybody in ignorance. Without making allowance for excusing 
circumstances, one may assert that in deeply laid designs of evil the rich in 
recent years have had nothing comparable with the socialistic plan to bring 
about a revolution by stirring up hatred, abolishing the church and the fam- 
ily, and throwing over various standards of right. If the classes that are 
not rich will only be honest and patriotic themselves, using diligently their 
unprecedented opportunities to get knowledge and capability, they will soon 
be able to remove by law and self-help the wrongs that enrich the few, and 
thus to turn the talents of these to service that is free from robbery. Not 
only for the many will there never be any other way of getting wealth 
than by rendering for it a full return at market values, but there will be 
no other way for the few — for the sharpers and the pampered sons of the 
rich — when the many learn better the mighty task of individual training 
and social government with which they have been honored by the Creator. 

It is Too Much to Expect of Human Nature that the rich will vol- 
untarily go further than they now go by philanthropy In a movement for 
shearing themselves of their power, or that going further will appear to 



Trade Unionism- and the Church. 651 

often asserted. The hatred is connected with the sociaHstic 
charge that the church pacifies the workers with promises of 
heaven, and cows them with threats of hell, in order that their 
exploitation under the present industrial system may be contin- 
ued without resistance.^ No doubt the old and settled churches 
of both Europe and America have been culpably conservative, 
neglecting their duty to the common people in order to retain 
the favor of the wealthy, by whom the church is controlled and 
mainly supported. But for some years in Germany an influen- 
tial party in the Catholic church, and a similar party in the 
Protestant church, have earnestly sought to assist the working 
class in their reasonable struggles, though against atheistic and 
revolutionary socialism many Catholic prelates have made pro- 
nouncement, and their church in Europe fosters anti-socialistic 
societies. The Catholic party in different countries has a labor 
program, and there are many Catholic societies and periodicals 
for workingmen. Several organizations for befriending the 
working class movement exist on a small scale in the Episcopal 
church in England and America, and individually many clergy- 

them as a duty. For them to aid the people so far as that would render 
still more inadequate the latter's capacity for self-government. And those 
rich men who now devote their fortunes to education would be far less use- 
ful to society if they followed the example of Owen and St. Simon, rich 
and able socialists whose life work was useful in hastening reforms, but 
perhaps was more useful still in proving the impossibility of socialism. 
Whatever injustice may be ascribed to methods by which a man's wealth 
has been acquired, there can be very little retroactive punishment by taking 
that wealth now. If people then were not able, by means of law and in- 
dividual alertness, to hold wealth getting to honest methods, their suffering 
was needed for their instruction under nature's plan. The same is true as 
to the wealth getting of to-day. 

^"And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work 
with your hands." (i Thess. iv. 11.) This advice of St. Paul, though of- 
fensive to a socialist, is followed by those who do good work of any kind. 
Even he whose own business is that of a labor agitator does a great deal of 
quiet thinking, obs.erving, and personal interviewing, and to his work applies 
himself diligently. Most people need to obey the text as hand workers, but 
there is no hint that duty may not call one of these to organizing his fellows, 
as Peter left fishing and Paul left tent making. "And be content with your 
wages," John the Baptist's admonition, would be agreed with by the union 
leader in the case of pay not to be raised higher, like that of the Roman 
soldiers addressed, and also by the reasonable socialist after he had found 
that by no means could conditions be changed. 



652 Getting a Living. 

men of this church, as well as of the other churches, in both 
these countries, are outspoken in taking the side of the workers. 
In the British strikes in 1889 among dockers, and in 1893 among 
miners, the clergy were with the foremost in giving money and 
exerting influence, and were followed by many persons of 
wealth and position. At present the tendency with American 
preachers as a class, including not a few who minister to 
wealthy congregations, is to go further in favoring socialism 
and unionism than economic truth would justify;^ and during 
the last twenty years, leading instead of following, they have 
received proposals of social reform fully as fast as the latter 
have proved their right to a hearing. Those preachers who 
unduly defend the rich are doubtless outnumbered by those who 
are too considerate toward the poor to tell them unwelcome 
truth. It is significant that those economists most widely 
studied by church people — Professor Ely and others of lesser 
note but of similar views — are the ones who go furthest in 
defense of unionism and socialism. The ablest of the religious 
journals also advocate freely the various reforms that are based 
on reason, without concern as to being called socialistic. 

'' Unto This Last as Unto Thee." The idea that the or- 
ganized or agitated workers believe in Christ, but not in the 
church, is connected with the notion that Christ was a social 
reformer, and would now be a labor agitator; and with the 
other notion that he taught socialistic or communistic equality, 
in the parable of the same payment to hired men beginning at 
the eleventh hour as to others who had borne the burden and 

'Prof. F. G. Peabody ("Jesus Christ and the Social Question"), from 
whom a number of facts and ideas in this chapter are taken, shows that the 
part of preachers and church bodies, in solving social problems, is to re- 
prove sin and wrong as did the ancient prophet, but that they frequently 
make mistakes, and expose their ignorance, when by proposing specific 
remedies, or endorsing labor movements, they attempt the work of the 
economist or statesman. 

"The downward movement in the extension of the range of ethical ob- 
ligation has in recent years been stronger than the upward one. The favored 
classes are to some extent trying to atone for the shortcomings of past cent- 
uries. This is well; but it is also right that earnest endeavor be made to 
quicken the conscience of wage earners to a sense of their obligations, for, 
like all others, they have been thinking too much about rights and too little 
about duties." (R. T. Ely, "The Social Law of Service," 1896.) 



Trade Unioiusm and the Church. 653 

heat of the day (but who would have made trouble before 
working on the same basis many days longer). That Christ 
was a teacher of religion for all future ages and peoples, not a 
reformer of government or industry for the one age and coun- 
try in which he lived, is clear in his persistent refusal to be 
made a political leader or king, or to be entangled in questions 
of law or property. And that he did not teach socialistic 
equality is evident, not only from the fact that he wonderfully 
avoided trespassing on natural laws since discovered by science, 
but also in his parables of unequal reward according to talents 
received, and of reward or punishment according to faithful- 
ness or unfaithfulness in business stewardship. Instead of 
being a sentimentalist, sympathizing with and blessing all alike, 
regardless of individual merit, Christ was stern and strong in 
relation to justice and duty. He pronounced doom on the 
unprofitable servant with the one neglected talent, and taught 
that to be worthy of his blessing one must bear the cross daily, 
and be, not regardful of the socialist's bodily comforts, but 
ready to serve even to the loss of life. Christ, followed by those 
nations and persons that reach real success, was ''not so much 
concerned with making the world soft and easy, as with making 
moral fibre hard and strong." In these matters of merit in 
service God is a respecter of persons, as men soon learned to be 
from experience, and as by nature men must be if human life 
on earth is to continue. It is in receiving his children who 
turn from sin unto him that there is equal welcome "unto this 
last as unto thee" — unto the worst as unto the best — and more 
joy over the prodigal returned than over the son who had wast- 
ed no property and grieved no hearts. It was in deserving- 
employment, and in using such opportunities as came, not in 
quantity of product, that the eleventh hour servants were equal 
in merit with the others. The same principle of judging men's 
conduct according to their opportunities is followed everywhere 
to-day. A man doing the best he can, but causing so many 
losses by his failures that his service to society becomes a 
minus quantity, may be regarded as equally faithful with an- 
other whose talents and good fortune make his life a line of 
successes. " 'Tis not what a man does that exalts him, but 
what he would do.''^ Christ was the friend of the poor, but he 

^Browning, quoted by Peabody, 293. 



654 Getting a Living. 

was also the friend of the righteous rich, bestowing his approval 
on the rich publican Zaccheus, and on different Pharisees who 
did not participate in the wickedness of their sect. To have 
civilization, or life of any kind for many, there must be wealth, 
and to have wealth there must be rich men, with incomes large 
in proportion as their services to society. are valuable, on the 
same principle that a good farmer gets good crops. Christian- 
ity, being sensible and true, recognizes these and all other facts 
of nature, endeavoring to lead men into the righteousness that 
will raise all to the highest level of good attainable from their 
gifts and environment. 

The Elements of Truth in Unionism and Socialism are 
Uniting Them With Christianity, in the grand movement for 
human welfare. The most hopeful sign of the times is the 
growing disposition in all classes to agree in the right spirit on 
means of social reform. Just as far as it can go and yet be 
faithful to its divine purpose, for which it has been sustained 
and increased for nearly two thousand years, the church overT 
looks the widespread tendency toward setting up unionism in 
Christianity's place. ^ Because unionism, despite its faults, re- 

^The Union's Proper Objects are Business and Politics. Of course 
there are many thousands of unionists who have no thought of setting union- 
ism in the place of Christianity, as there are many thousands of them who, 
in the necessity at unionized places of being members, consent only passively 
to unionism's other faults. In unionism, as in other movements, it is largely 
on the good conduct of these conservatives that success depends. For- 
tunately such conservatism has been fast increasing in unionism since the 
rise of its many able leaders. It is nothing to the discredit of unionism, 
so long as it adheres to the right, that its morality is inferior to that of 
the church. The fault is the tendency to claim the church's place. The 
union's object is to effect changes in industry, by law and combination, not 
to teach religion or morality. The American Federation of Labor rightly 
sent speakers to the South to agitate for new laws against child labor in 
factories. Such laws benefit society, and the Federation had a direct consid- 
eration in their effect to strengthen unionism and wages. But the church's 
resources are insufficient for half that ought to be done in the religious work 
of putting into people's hearts the desire and ability to do right — of giving 
them moral qualities without which society's increasing consideration for 
the weak could not continue. It would usually be wrong, and self-destruc- 
tive, for a church body to leave its highest of all service and turn aside Into 
political or labor reform, any further than with occasional sermons and 
resolutions for urging performance of individual duty (page 652). The 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 655 

suits in uplifting, especially of those who carry it forward and 
receive most of its benefits, and because it has grown up from 
forces less under the control of its leaders than is usual in such 
cases, the church, in its sympathy for all who labor and strug- 
gle, is disposed to excuse, not to accentuate, unionism's frequent 
indulgence in a spirit and a method that are unchristian. If 
unionism will remove from its own eye the beam of departure 
from the principles of law and of Christianity, it will lead the 
church to complete the removal from its eye of the mote of 
failure io recognize unionism's merits. Not much of this mote 
yet remains. For the presence in unionism of a feeling against 
individual industry and thrift, in the hope for socialistic help 
from others, which feeling has been the cause of much of the 
cold unconcern and opposition among the rich, the church is 
now making full allowance in view of the workers' circum- 
stances. Making their policy conform more closely to eco- 
nomic laws, which would seem to be within the easy grasp of 
the enlightened unionism of to-day, will secure for the workers 
willing recognition from the church and from public opinion, 
and substantial concessions from employers. Though the 
church has always been faulty, like other human institutions, 
and though its failure in Europe to do more for uplifting the 
suffering masses drove them to a ''pathetic attempt to find in 
socialism a substitute for religious faith" (Peabody), — the 
various denominations of to-day in America are certainly 
striving very earnestly, with great cost in money and labor, to 
be faithful to their trust — to prove that the Christian religion 
is the means of social redemption. The most effective way to 
secure their full cooperation with all that is right in unionism is 

church's purpose is to "generate a supply of spiritual energy sufficient to 
move the world with wisdom, courage, and peace." (Peabody, 357.) 

The Source of Religious Infidelity. Though there was some excuse 
in the hopelessness of the European workers' lot, the denial of Christianity- by 
socialism, as by infideHty in other quarters, has sprung chiefly perhaps from 
an unwillingness to view soberly and resignedly the facts of nature as they 
are. The apparent lack of unionist ardor in some Christian men belonging 
to unions [McClure's, Jan. 1902) may arise not only from scruples against 
violent methods, but also from a patient seriousness, which after facing 
God's requirements in religion Is well able alone to adjust one's life satisfac- 
torily to present industrial conditions, with an ability indicated in these 
cases by ownership of homes. 



656 Getting a Living. 

for unionists to unite with them, and thus to perform individual 
rehgious duty while influencing them toward better perform- 
ance of social duty. All along unionism has naturally been 
favored by those congregations composed of workers, and by 
those preachers belonging to their class. Similarly, the wise 
way to bring unionism to righteousness and highest usefulness 
is for Christian men who oppose it to admit the fact that by 
nature it has come to stay, and by recognizing or joining it to 
influence it toward the great good of which it is capable. As 
European socialists — giving up their policy of cultivating class 
hatred, in the hope of thus bringing early and violently the 
cooperative commonwealth,^ — are now no longer standing 
aloof, but by uniting with the reform elements of all parties are 
fast securing the most promising legislation, so the trade union- 
ists of America, if accorded the consideration their cause de- 
serves, will add greatly to the forces that make for human 
progress, instead of being a menace in its way. 

^Bernstein in Germany, and Millerand in France, are socialist leaders who 
have perceived that a new and better society is never to be ushered in by 
a cataclysm (which socialists long sought to bring about and expected to 
come before 1925), but only in the old way of improving as best we can 
the society we have, which is the best that all the generations preceding us 
have been able to make. 

The Lack of Foundation for the Workers' Complaints of the Church 
is shown in the studied replies to letters sent by Rev. Charles Stelzle to over 
two hundred of the country's foremost labor leaders. The faults they 
pointed out the church and its preachers have long been considering, and 
endeavoring to remedy in the best ways to be devised. Though the con- 
scientious will strive to put away caste, and to be sincerely democratic, the 
church will continue to be high or low, cultured or plain, according to the 
level of the majority of a congregation. The workers, being properly 
hostile to separate missions and "workingmen's churches" (a number of 
the latter have failed), must adjust themselves to a church of social grades 
like those of society. While teaching the same righteousness for all, the 
church can no more decide whether an employer member pays enough 
wages than whether an employee member does enough work. Such ques- 
tions are difficult for even an expert board of arbitrators taking full testi- 
mony. The all-inclusive reason for present unionist hostility to the church 
is hardly other than the usual unwillingness in any class to repent of sin 
and to give up self-indulgence. Those workmen, whether proud or lowly, 
who in the right spirit attend or join a church, are not troubled by the 
church's faults, and soon find that those who do its work and bear its bur- 



Trade Unionism and the Church. 657 

dens learn best what plans to follow. (For the replies of labor leaders see 
Mr. Stelzle's book, F. H. Revell Co., 1903.) 

Not a Peculiar People. Miss Vida Scudder {Atlantic , Nov. 1902) says 
the reason why city workers as a class have no use for the church is that 
its members are the same as outsiders in hard dealing and luxurious living, 
and that Christian simplicity of life, with social fellowship across class 
lines, must be so increased as to become distinctive. But does not a mo- 
ment's presence reveal the difference between a conscientious Christian man, 
whether rich or poor, and a worldling, — between the thousands of Marys 
and Marthas in all social grades and the butterflies of fashion? The 
church tries to do all it can to make its members and all others Christ-like, 
and is striving earnestly to exert more influence in this respect. One of 
Christ's chosen twelve proved to be a son of perdition, and another fell 
away for a time. The different degrees of Christian spirituality are easily 
noticeable. By their duty toward the weak around them, as well as by 
their stewardship of wealth, Christians are required not to give in money 
or business lenience anything undeserved. The church cannot win favor 
with generosity as saloon keepers do. Those who are only to be won thus 
have not that seeking and hungering spirit to which alone is Christ acces- 
sible. 



42 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE MAN WITH THE HOE.^ 

Self-Help the Only Dependence. As unionism has proved 
its merit, and by various reforms must do so further in order 
to completely fulfill its mission, so must each individual prove 
his right to all he would depend upon possessing. He who 
fails to put money in his purse, or to be useful and desirable in 
some other way, can never hope to count for much among men. 
He may be kept down without fault by misfortune, as others 
are cut off by early death. Life will hardly be otherwise than 
uncertain. But God helps those who first do their best to help 
themselves, and men help likewise. So to wrest natural prefer- 
ence as to choose people for their undesirableness is not ex- 
pected to prevail very far under any code of morality.^ 

^Title of a poem by Edwin Markham, 1899, portraying the lot of common 
laborers as unjustly hard. 

^Booker T. Washington, founder of the industrial school at Tuskegee, 
Ala., probably the greatest, certainly the most useful, of all colored men 
the world has known, has sound ideas on the elevation of his race. His 
effort is to make his students so desirable as farmers and wage workers that 
the whites will be glad to hire them and deal with them, and will be com- 
pelled by their merit, and by the strength of the demand they can then 
make — to allow them their rights as voters. He makes no claims of con- 
sideration for the colored man because he has been our mistreated brother 
in black. Claims of that kind, though excusable, have doubtless caused the 
colored man to depend upon help from others instead of from himself. To 
rise in character, position and property, any man, white or colored, must be 
willing to make it pay others to hire him or deal with him. It seems wise 
and right for the Negroes to use expediency in seeking justice. They may 
deserve consideration without having fully or overflowingly to earn it, as 
Mr. Washington recommends, but they have no other way to get it, and 
cannot have too much merit when that is paid for in wages to them as 
they go along; while the whites who withhold justice will not be made worse 
by such a return of good for evil. Yet — to avoid becoming settled in in- 
feriority, and thus losing power to rise from it, and to avoid confirming the 

(658) 



The Man With the Hoe. 659 



Let Us Hear the Conclusion of the Whole Matter of wages 
and employment. Now and in the future, as heretofore, each 
person must find out for himself what work society wants done, 
what will yield largest reward to him, and then go and do that 

whites in self-injuring injustice — the Negroes should be watchful to make 
continually as strong a protest and demand as right opportunism sanctions. 

Few People Are So Benevolent as to be Moved long in business by 
other considerations than those of personal advantage, especially when the 
one helped does not show decided merit. The over-wrought objection to 
men passing middle life, which often brings deserved loss instead of gain 
in its eager self-seeking, teaches not to trust in gray hairs, but in a pocket 
filled in earlier life, and in a capacity to do that asks no favors. And the 
lines dividing one social level from another show no sign of giving way 
(page 114). A black skin is only one of these lines of division. Common 
people in the North are sharply separated into a lower class without black- 
ness of skin. Ignorance or unfashionable dress answers the same purpose of 
division, or any kind of undesirableness, whether real or fancied. People 
the world over, in every class, will continue to like and associate with 
some of those around them, and to dislike and repel others. A person may 
be wrongly excluded, but all he can do is to prove himself desirable. Per- 
haps some of his own dislikes may not be wholly reasonable. The exist- 
ence of a variety of congeniality gives every one a chance to possess friends, 
but necessitates at the same time that toward few individuals should many 
be attracted. A few self-sacrificing Christian workers devote special atten- 
tion to the unattractive at church gatherings ; but they can spend very little 
time with each, and the latter, noticing the effort, must perceive that the 
separation of people into sets is inevitable under nature's laws. Though to 
give way to inward feelings of complaint is natural, ax:cepting the situation • i 

as itjs^ and making the best of it, will secure for each person a fair share of •*< f\MuU 
happiness in life. The sure cure for despondency is to turn away from \ 

thoughts of one's self to diligent effort in using what opportunities one has. 
Shallow people find their own level, and are not troubled at being excluded ; 
while those who, mentally and morally, are really superior to those who 
snub them, must develop that deeper self-respect which is not affected by 
adverse conditions, and must strive to deserve still better the favor of that 
large and increasing class who willingly recognize merit anywhere, and 
who never think of looking down upon (Bellamy rightly condemned this) 
one that does the lowest of honest work well. Besides, saving money, and 
having it to spend, will command respect from others not so just. Every- 
one is excluded somewhere — the richest man in a small city is nobody so- 
cially in a large city — and so on up to kings and emperors. 

However, for those persons who are socially established it would show 
confidence in their standing, and not indicate in it a need of nursing — if 
instead of avoiding all not fully up to their level they made a practice of 
re.cognizing and thus raising to it the many bright people below with whom 



66o Getting a Living. 

work. The state can educate him through childhood and youth, 
and aid him, more so than at present, with such laws as will 
also benefit society. His relatives and friends can give him 
advice, help him with their influence to get employment, or 
patronize him until he can prove his fitness to survive in the 
business chosen. But this is all that nature will permit to be 
done for him. He must then look out for himself. He will 
lose both the inclination and the power to care for himself if 
more is done for him. To allow him to expect more will tend 
toward the same effect. Nothing more substantial than en- 
couraging words can be given him, beyond what he earns, until 
sickness, or poverty to the point of hunger or cold, brings him 
down upon private or public charity. All this is decreed in 
nature, whatever we may think about it. The sentimentalist is 

such recognition is the only lack, and whose fellowship would be worth the 
eflfort, apart from the resulting increase of the world's happiness and capa- 
bility, and the rise of character in the one bringing it about. A writer in 
the Atlantic, Sept. 1903, says that even writers and reformers having wealth 
and social position fail to cordially recognize, and thus encourage as is 
deserved, wage earners fully their equals in the line of thought that con- 
nects them ; that is, wage earners are tried on all tests at once, instead of 
as Mr. Roosevelt might measure men, by associating on an equality with 
one as a soldier and frontiersman, another as an author, another as a states- 
man, and another as a man of wealth and Knickerbocker ancestry. 

The Equality Into Which All Men are Created is only that of equal 
protection from law and opinion (page 640), with that of equal access to 
God (page 653). That by nature people will always be separated into classes 
Thomas Jefferson, if he did not know it in 1776, learned afterward from 
the failure of his attempt to abolish divisions into social grades at Wash- 
ington. When living in communistic societies people made equal in prop- 
erty and station are likely soon to be nauseated by the continual presence 
of brethren for whom they have no affinity, and those with minds not to be 
contented with the commonplaces of farm life tend toward ideas and in- 
terests that make communism unbearable. Mr. Brooks gives significant 
accounts of the disgust of Robert Owen's communists with attempts at equal- 
ity of dress. William Morris, and other socialists having the individuality 
of the artist, were repelled by the equality of Bellamy. Social lines are 
drawn in the working class, as in the classes above. At a dance of Boston 
factory girls Mr. Brooks saw placards announcing that no servants would 
be admitted ; and skilled mechanics usually treat their helpers as belonging 
to a lower order. Of one flesh has God created all men, but certainly not 
of one mind or one taste ; and what he has made different let no man hope 
to make equal. 



\yr>AOiA. 



The Man With the Hoe. 66i 

presumptuous who calls nature's laws "heartless and unchris- 
tian." Any practical man understands these things well. Some 
of the reasons why they are so are explained in these chapters. 
Yet sympathy and helpfulness are just as noble as they were 
ever considered. Their office is to cheer and encourage always, 
but never to do for a person what he ought to do for himself. 
Whatever may be done to uplift the masses, the wage worker, 
to fare well and be independent in this world, must strive like 
people in other classes — be unceasingly active to do more and 
better work, to prepare himself for better positions, to save 
money and acquire property, and to go into business for himself 
if that should be practicable. The present civilized system of 
producing wealth, under division of occupations and with ex- 
change determined by supply and demand values, grew up 
according to laws of nature, and only as those laws permiit can 
the system be changed, whatever the extremes of wealth and 
poverty, and whatever the desire to level up the low places in 
society. 

The Son's Welfare is Not to be Insured by the Father or 
the State. The Illinois millionaire who failed to secure a 
successful life for his sons had vastly more money, more ability, 
and more desire to benefit them, than will ever be possessed for 
each of its sons by the state. Means to endow each of its needy 
millions with a portion of wealth the state cannot get, nor if it 
had the means could it prepare the needy to use a portion wisely, 
as many a son is prepared. It can only continue its present 
course of increasing facilities for education, and of enacting 
such labor laws as will result in public benefit. Very few in 
the upper classes are knowingly perverse in this matter, and 
very many of them are generally correct in their views. If 
reasons convincing to unbiased intelligence could be given for 
proposals to abolish poverty with socialistic laws, their enact- 
ment could undoubtedly be secured at once. If wealth to 
divide among the poor would answer, there would be no trouble 
in raising a billion dollars in private contributions. The futil- 
ity of guaranteeing income and environment — the impossibility 
by nature of lifting people out of poverty to remain, otherwise 
than by teaching them as at present, with but little state assist- 
ance, to save themselves, — is shown in the inability of the 
richest and wisest parents to provide thus for their children. 



662 Getting a Living. 

When these are left with annuities or Hfe rights they cannot 
barter away, they soon sink toward imbecihty, by reason of 
rehef from labor and responsibility/ Even activity in ordi- 
narily proper training and care of children is easily overdone, 
making their chances worse than those of others about whom 
the parents do not trouble themselves.- On the same principles 
orphan children kept in large numbers in an institution, as 
socialism has looked forward to a public table on the Spartan 
plan, are pitifully helpless, unhappy, and backward in growth. 
By finding homes for orphans in adoption, and by placing 
reform school children in small groups in cottages, the state 
and orphan societies now bear witness to nature's law that 
people must live in families, and carry their own burdens, or 
sink fast toward not living at all. The much discussed coopera- 

^Primogeniture in England is evil in making the oldest son an aristocrat, 
but it is good in developing enterprise in the younger sons by depriving ' 
them of a portion, and enforcing self-reliance. To this matter of inheritance 
is largely due the superiority of the English over the French, whose equal 
division of estates (good otherwise) checks individual enterprise, which 
is further checked by the giving of a dowry with a daughter at her mar- 
riage. The waiting dependence of the son for help from his own and his 
wife's father has been perhaps the main factor in bringing about in France 
a condition that threatens national decline. Americans, fortunately, are 
usually too enterprising to be affected by dowries or inheritances. 

^Spoiling Children. A writer in Atlantic Monthly for Jan. 1902, shows 
the harmful effects of making children too important — the wearing out of 
the parents in effort to please them, and the increase of their unhappiness 
from a growth of desire that possession of the earth would not satisfy. The 
child with a room full of toys is never as comfortable as the child with 
nothing but playthings he picks up around the house. A child whose eating 
is watched, to make sure that he gets the best and enough, tends to lose his 
appetite. A writer in Int. Jour. Ethics of Oct. 1902, shows similar results 
from too much regard for children in the public schools. And a grown 
person is spoiled almost as easily, unless he is conscientiously watchful to take 
all his own share of the trouble and blame — a trait for which people of 
socialistic ideas are not noted. For holding every person to performance 
of duty nature requires, in the ruling by men, not a little of her own stern- 
ness. Its wholesomeness is shown by the dependable affection of children 
for the old-fashioned father, who ruled with authority, as compared with 
their light regard for parents that indulge them. The parent's ruling de- 
generates easily into serving. As the mother cannot do the daughter's 
learning, neither can she do the daughter's working, but must hold her to 
her household tasks, and not supinely injure both by doing the tasks herself. 



The Man With the Hoe. 663 

tive housekeeping, by a group of families at one table, to relieve 
wives from household care, is prohibited by this law of nature, 
as well as by the inability of most people to bear the cost of that 
or any other kind of boarding. 

The Man With the Hoe is Generally Happier than those 
who are concerned about him, though their kindly spirit is to 
be commended ; and instead of being ''stolid and stunned, a 
brother to the ox," or of feeling that he carries anybody else's 
burden, the country worker in America leads on the average a 
life preferable to that of better paid and better schooled men of 
his natural capacity in the city — preferable physically, men- 
tally, and morally. As has been said, God must love the com- 
mon people, because he made so many of them. But what is 
wrong about it ? Did he create them common and then expect 
them to become uncommon ? Not a few wise men think that 
what this weary world now needs is a return by many persons 
to simpler living. Some people want too many things here 
below. A want that cannot be satisfied is an evil. However ^ vt^o 
worthy may be the desire in tlie worker and his family to raise i-; 
their standard of living, it is still true that godliness with con-; w^u4-Wi vu 
tentment is great gain. The strenuous life is very good so long"^ ^^^^^^^^^^j^jy^ 
as it is directed to attainable ends — is confined to effort for ' 

which it is naturally fitted. Beyond these lines it is beating 
the air. Bu^worst of all, and far too common, is a complain-, 
ing mood without strenuousness to make one's condition better. 
Such a mood adds to the disagreeableness of labor, lessens its 
product, and drags one downward ; while hopefully making the 
best of things lightens the burden of labor (leads most people 
to enjoy it, in view of its results), adds to product and wages, 
and leads one upward. Nothing is more destructive to one's 
progress than to blame all on society. 

Evil Socialistic Teaching* Underlies the Common Complaint' 
of the city worker who, whether his weekly pay be seven dollars 
or seventeen, tells ]\Ir. Brooks or Miss Addams that he can save 
nothing — that even two children are too many for a working- 
man, and that as his family has nothing like the living it should 
have, saving by him would be wrong. From the same evil 
teaching come the mood and words of the man who justifies 
his frequenting of saloons, theatres, and dance halls by saying 
"there is no other way to get away from the maddening, intol- 



664 Getting a Living. 

erable efforts of our hard struggle for bread." Everywhere 
other famihes working harder and earning less, but depending 
cheerfully and hopefully on themselves instead of yielding to 
the socialistic fostering of distrust and despair, enjoy life more 
than his, and save a quarter of their incomes ; and do this, not 
by the foolish waste of refusing to spend all that is necessary to 
keep one's self at his best, under the life plan followed, but by 
saving not simply the money, but also the strength and charac- 
ter that would be wasted in over-spending or dissipation. 
Moreover, not only other families, but in many a case the same 
family passes from failure under extravagance to success under 
frugality, and with the narrower living is happier than before 
when in the right spirit it makes the best of things. Such has 
been the case with many a young man brought from a higher 
to a lower work by ill health. What could be more futile, un- 
der the impossibility of changing the present system materially, 
than the socialistic unionist's teaching that thrift is no virtue — 
that spending all will make trade good ana lead the workers to 
demand more pay ? ''The Fallacy of Saving" is the title of an 
English book. Especially do socialists fear the effect of saving to 
give workers a stake in the present industrial order and to make 
them contented, and hence opposed to the social revolution. 
It is such hand-to-mouth living as some unionists teach that 
fills the country with installment agents and collectors — men 
producing no goods but getting their full share — and that 
causes consumption and employment to drop so low in dull 
times. Thrifty and sensibly ambitious people, on the contrary, 
whom saving makes able to consume (the French peasant, living 
for the sake of hoarding, is not meant), give a variety of em- 
ployment by furnishing good homes and by rising in culture, 
while their buying is for cash, and in dull times is but little 
diminished. And in the wage demand of a worker having 
wants but no money, what force is there compared with the 
demand of one who could lie idle a year, or travel anywhere ? 

The Added Liberty and Power of the Workers have not 
been given them because by spending all they were needy and 
helpless, but because they proved their worthiness by develop- 
ing the self-help, thrift, and character recommended by Samuel 
Smiles (called by Mr. Webb the socialist "that unconscious 
corrupter of youth"). With those qualities they not only gained 



The Man With the Hoe. 665 

the good of the Hfe that then was, but with those quahties 
alone — not being lulled by content but being given desire for 
more and ability to get it — they have since been gaining many 
a good that was thus to come. To overcome the waste and 
indifference by which, under American wages, the poor cause 
nearly all the poverty themselves, and to awaken effort for 
better things, nothing perhaps is more effective than to start 
people in saving, though it be only in penny provident societies, 
and in the smallest deposits in savings banks. Encouragement 
to save, and to improve homes, is a leading effort of societies to 
assist the poor. To provide everywhere ready and safe means 
of saving, the European system of receiving and paying interest 
on deposits at post offices should doubtless be adopted by the 
American government.^ 

Possibilities in Life. The "lamentable case of Hodges- 
would be different now. He represented a poorly paid English 
farm laborer long ago, whose desire to better his condition was 
not encouraged by the preacher and other advisers. Their idea 
of a fixed station for a person, in the class into which he was 

'Saving Habits in Immigrants. Though, to avoid a foreignizing and 
a changing of America from her unapproached desirableness heretofore, 
and to avoid a crowding of production to poorer land and harder condi- 
tions, it would be well to restrict immigration closely, yet the willingness of 
most immigrants to live on nearly nothing in order to save money is a fact 
not against them but in their favor, and is a far stronger incentive to wage 
demand than is desire to spend at once for good living. Ability to labor 
and to deny self in the present for the sake of the future (not yet reached 
by Filipinos and Hindoos) is the first requisite for rise to civilization. 
People ready to endure the hard living of the Slavs in Pennsylvania in w\t^' 
order to save money will soon learn to go after and demand the highest ' , 
pay securely in reach, as Chinese are not backward in raising prices and "1 Ij^Vl 
dealing strictly in conducting laundries, and in domestic service. The ef- ' 

feet of saving to give one strength and independence to go alone is attested 
by the socialist and unionist fear of it in piece work. A fixed desire to 
save and achieve surpasses education in leading one to acquire that wide 
view of the field of work, and that definite purpose, whose lack Mr. 
Wyckoff found to be the great handicap of the poor. As in many relations 
reserve power is the greatest of all power, and potentiality superior to ac- 
tuality, so does keeping surpass spending, the latter of which is often dis- 
appointing, the effect of keeping being to give such self-control and endur- 
ance that care must be taken to avoid injurious extremes. 

■F. A. Walker's "Political Economy," page 283. 



666 Getting a Living. 

born, has never been prevalent in America during the century 
just closed; and for some time many have taken the opposite 
extreme, that any person can rise to greatness if he will. The 
latter idea is no more true than the former. A person's possi- 
bilities in life are determined by his natural powers of mind 
and body, as helped or hindered by elements of chance (to him 
at least) in his surroundings and opportunities. Heredity is 
not all. Of the same parents are born children differing widely 
in capacity. Environment is not all. In the same town, and 
even in the same family, of boys apparently equal by birth and 
opportunity, some do well and others do ill. Sometimes both 
heredity and environment seem to be nothing. It is not very 
unusual for one boy of dull parents, in a bad environment, to 
outstrip another boy of bright parents in a good environment.^ 
Where the body is fitted to survive, no one above the grade of 
imbecility has now a destiny fixed beyond his control. For all 
such there is a field for effort with fairly sure reward. With- 
out too much misfortune, any person can rise who has rising 
powers. He who lacks rising powers must stay down unless 
somebody lifts him, and then he will usually need holding; but 
by effort he can generally do fairl}^ well without rising. The 
feeblest effort, when it is the best and wisest one can put forth,. 
results at once in enlarging his capacity. Small rising powers 
are sometimes made large by a strong will, but the will was 
really an important part of those powers at first, giving them the 
element of extensive growth. Large rising powers in poverty 
often prove to be a more desirable gift with birth than fortune 
without such powers. Wisdom is knowing what to do with 
the powers one has, large or small. Virtue is doing that thing.^ 

^Henry George said that If Adam Smith had been a coal hewer's son he 
would not have founded the science of political economy; and Mr. Hobson 
says the reason why a physician is paid more than a dock laborer "is not 
because of any greater inherent skill in the former's calling, but because 
of the present distribution of economic and educational opportunities." 
These socialistic assertions are proved to be of little value by American 
experience. Under school and work opportunities here not even in the slums 
or the black belt are there a considerable number of boys who could not 
easily obtain the physician's education, if they have the natural talent and 
will that would be necessary though they were rich (page 635) ; yet in- 
equalities of pay here are about the same as in England. 

^David Starr Jordan, The Independent, Dec. 6, 1900. 



The. Man With the Hoe. 667 

There is Little Need for Complaint Nowadays about these 
things, by the individual in regard to himself. Very few who 
know enough to notice defects in their conditions are unable to 
improve them. The tendency everywhere is to give special aid 
to those who strive to do their best, even when their rising 
powers are doubtful ; and sometimes when their character does 
not indicate clearly that they will be helpful, not harmful, to 
society. The country is full of low-charge colleges and technical 
schools for ambitious youths of both sexes, in which every prac- 
ticable encouragement is given them. Very rarely is merit of 
no avail. Wealthy people more and more, with their money 
and influence, are promoting individual and collective progress 
in the working class, and are doing so wisely and disinterest- 
edly.^ Though, as President Eliot complains, in his plea for 
larger outlays in education, the people are still lamentably in 
need of knowledge and self control, as shown by inability to 
get rid of drunkenness and crime, by readiness to follow crazes, 
like the free silver heresy, and by the continual biting of mil- 
lions at thinly baited hooks of advertising; and though, as 
socialists and other reformers urge, there is crying need for 
more and better laws as to housing and sanitation in cities, and 

^Do the Rich Want Anybody to be Poor? Small and decreasing, under 
the present intelligence of the rich, is the basis for the old idea, still com- 
mon in England, that as the cultured life of the rich depends upon their 
having a class of common people to wait on them, it is the desire of the rich 
to keep people poor. Even with idle receivers of rent and interest, a good 
income, and relief from poor law taxation, depend upon good use of their 
land and capital, and hence upon employment of many workers at the 
good wages necessary for efficiency. The rich engaged in business are 
still more desirous of prosperity in the working class, that the latter ma^ 
buy many goods. By capitalists, employers, and even landholders, nearly 
all their wealth has been earned with services that the whole people as the 
state could not have rendered. (See first three chapters.) The rich are in 
no danger of losing their jobs, and have no need to keep any class poor to 
avoid being leveled themselves. Nature divides people into classes by 
giving differing abilities. Since by nature the poor can have a good living 
only by earning and paying for it, enriching them, by reforms and education, 
must enrich all others except a few monopolists deprived of unjust privileges. 
To cooks and coachmen of ability the rich are glad to pay high wages. If 
the poor in Europe and Asia were raised to the level of American workers, 
the world's rich would have a vastly better field in which to make money 
and enjoy life. 



668 Getting a Living. 

for protection in many respects of the weaker workers, — never- 
theless, in spite of all this, the ruling majority are improving 
the schools and granting reforms as fast as their intelligence 
and honesty will permit. Apparently, the working class lead- 
ers, in their readiness to tax the people in high wages for public 
work, and to follow demagogues for class advantage instead of 
patriots for the good of all, are not in a position to pass censure 
on other classes that they do not take upon themselves. 

To Do Well the Hoeing in Hand is generally the first sign 
of rising powers, or of individual desert for better things. 
This was not the case with Daniel Webster, whose scythe did 
not hang well until he hung it on the fence ; but his was a mind 
of genius, which could choose its own way of making itself 
known, and his father stood ready to educate him. Really 
good workers, in whatever grade, down to the lowest, seldom 
fail to be rewarded, and to find their work pleasurable besides. 
This is true even of poor workers when they try to do better. 
The majority of people must always do common work. There 
is more of it to be done, and most of them could do no other. 
In it they can serve society best. Rising for them will be doing 
it in an uncommon way. Nearly every person, by taking 
thought in the right spirit, can increase or improve his work 
somewhat, and can do so to the advantage, not detriment, of 
his health and character. The more efficient he is, the better 
he serves society, and the more it will allow him in return.^ 

^The Quickness and Certainty with Whicfi Merit Wins better pay 
and better jobs have a solid basis in the employer's usual need for better 
work, in the extra profit to capital and management that such work yields 
at pay increased with full justice to the worker, and in the employer's 
being personally drawn toward any one who perceives and is faithful to 
his interests — whose deserving of a "well done" makes him desire to come 
under, instead of to avoid the master's eye. Reward for merit always has 
such a basis unless the worker is so near the employer in ability as to be 
feared as a possible competitor, in which case the worker is well able to 
get ahead without aid. The Erie Railway Company's recent order of dis- 
missal for all clerks over 35 who have never been promoted is not, as a 
Detroit daily suggests in an appeal to socialistic discontent, a denial of the 
right of men over 35 to earn a living, but is a removal of unfit men out of 
the way of promotion for younger men below them (page 293), and is a 
removal of them into other occupations in which the railway grade of abil- 
ity is not desired at its price. Though unionism requires members to apply 
for work to the foreman (at least one national union expels for applying 



The Mail With the Hoe. 66g 

Fortunately, not many are troubled by their low station who 
are unfitted to rise above it. The natural law, "To him that 
hath shall be given," hard as it may seem, is necessary in 
nature's system of self-development by individual effort. Get- 
ing property or knowledge gives capacity to get more ; failing 
to get them takes away what little capacity or property one had 
before. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing fails like 
failure. It is this continuous and increasing reward, or pun- 
ishment, drawing out man's best effort, that has made civiliza- 
tion what it is to-day. A contrary system, of rewarding need 
instead of effort, if it could have lasted a few years, would have 
changed men into full grown babies. 

Abide in That Station to Which You Were Called is there- 
fore a command of nature that can never be ignored. He who 
is called to step above the station of his birth seldom fails to get 
the means for making the change, though many of his best 
years may be spent in the process, and though criticism by 
those unable to understand him may add to his burdens. When 
the means are lacking, the call is uncertain. Where ability to 
achieve is clear, one may quickly get the means by striking out 
boldly, incurring debt, and brushing aside trivial family claims. 
And with those who attain special success, however praisewor- 
thy, the average of morality, contentment, and good citizenship 
may not be above that of those who remain on the farm, or of 
workers anywhere who acquire some intelligence and property. 
Who will say that in these first of all qualities the wealthiest 
circle in New York, gathered in a palatial club house, surpass 
a farmers' club for mutual improvement, gathered in the plain- 
otherwise), in order that he, as an active unionist, may give unionists the 
preference, and may prevent a seeking of promotion by displacement of 
others, — nevertheless, the foreman, partly because of absence of annoyance 
to him in watching work and in getting it done on time, is usually drawn 
toward efficiency and faithfulness arising from right motive. In the work 
of railways and some other large concerns unionism does not generally get 
such power over employment, and rich reward for merit is quick and sure. 
A Swede under twenty, before he had been in America a year, was lately 
earning $70 to $80 a month, on piece work as one of a gang of a half dozen, 
in the wood working department of the Pullman car shops. Mr. Wyckoff's 
finding everywhere of a readiness to reward merit was favored perhaps by 
his working for and near to small employers, and in factory work not union- 
ized, though under unionism too merit is usually discovered. 



670 Getting a Living. 

est rural home? Philanthropists in England are trying to in- 
duce more people to take up the hoe. The deaths per thousand 
there in 1890 were a fifth more in the cities than in the country. 
Everywhere the rush to the cities has doubtless reached an 
unhealthy stage. It is there in America that one must go to 
find real misery, or unwholesome extremes in wealth and 
poverty or in social position. Positive want is rare in the 
country, and overwork or unhealthy homes. ^ The duty of 
each person is simply to make the best use he can of the body 
and mind with which he has been endowed, and of the oppor- 
tunities within his reach. Doing this he may be, in the sight 
of God, and also of men, a greater success with the hoe than 
another with the scepter. "Act well your part [high or low] : 
therein the honor lies." 

There are Wrongs in Government and in other relations of 
society, many of which wrongs are discussed in this book. 
That they should continue so long is trying to the patience of 
one who discerns them. Yet happily (it will bear repeating) 
the tendency of the times, stronger than ever before, is to 
correct abuses — to make the rights of the lowest as sacred as 
those of the highest. Nearly all the people mean well. It is 
knowledge they lack — of these principles of wealth and life we 
have been studying. Nothing less than the truth itself will make 

^Happiness in Plain Living. It is easy to agree with the conclusion of 
a traveler that the negro natives of Bechuanaland have a better and happier 
life than most of the common people of England (page 582). This fact may- 
be an indictment of the English for not faster assisting their working class 
to better things, but that assistance must consist largely of teaching them 
to endure, like the farmer, the hardness of study, industry, and economy. 
The roughness of country life is nothing serious. Many a man who now 
fares sumptuously every day knows that he was happier long ago when he 
drank from a gourd and washed at the trough, and that he took just as 
much pride in his work. Only the rich have ennui. The complainer in the 
American city cannot reply that from a life of plenty in the country he is 
shut out by land monopoly. There is now more work and better pay for 
farm hands than ever before, and as good chances for success in farming 
for one's self. The fact that the body may never learn discomfort or may 
adjust itself to it — that the properly fed sewer cleaner has better health, 
and is less troubled with bad smells, than are the genteel — does not relieve 
the rich from the duty of assisting the poor away from dull animalism to 
the fullest life possible, but it is one justification of God's system of differing, 
abilities, and of his law that men must climb and not be carried up. 



The Man With the Hoe. 671 

men free indeed. The truth people must learn to accept, 
whether or not it is what they would like to believe. Upon 
their acceptance of the truth depends all permanent reform. 
It is for the majority to say what shall be done ; and it is for 
each person to say for himself whether, by diligent thought and 
conscientious action, he will help to advance what is good, or 
whether he will hold it back by refusing to see beyond the 
immediate interests of class or party. 

The Deserved Rebuke from the Man With the Hoe, to the 
American people, is for their delay in properly controlling 
trusts, railroads, and municipal monopolies, and for their delay 
in taxing incomes and inheritances (page 352) ; for their waste- 
ful spending of public money, influenced by those who receive 
it ; and for their continuance of protective tariff duties that give 
monopoly profits to mine and timber owners, and to some 
favored manufacturers, while raising prices of necessaries to 
poor consumers, preventing exchange of surplus products for 
greater values abroad, lessening employment by the effect of 
high price to restrict demand, and encouraging extravagant 
public expenditure. A government income so large and so 
easily collected, by indirect taxes the people do not see, and 
spent so freely, with a view to near interests of private benefi- 
ciaries, could never be levied and administered by men of human 
frailty without wide departure from honest effort to promote 
the highest welfare of all. Among the direct beneficiaries — of 
the tariff, of the spending, and of the uncontrolled monopolies 
— there must inevitably be a lowering of character, from the 
enjoyment of gain secured without rendering a full return. 
This gain is a continual inducement to seek private advantage 
at public expense. It would be corrupting with those of purest 
mind and disposition. Therefore, 

For the Common People's Discontent There is Reason that 
is not balanced by their own faults in the case of those workers, 
perhaps a majority of the dissatisfied, who are not sufficiently 
intelligent to be largely blamable for the wrongs in unionism, 
nor for following demagogues. The fact that in the middle 
and upper classes, for the same reason, an equal proportion of 
people must be relieved from blame, does not take from those 
classes, whose intelligence and influence must lead and rule, the 
duty of hearing and lifting up their less fortunate fellows. 



(iJ2 Getting a Living. 

Upon good grounds on the part of the common people, the 
equal public benefits of government and industry under present 
conditions are not clear enough to satisfy them that in the rapid 
fortune making of the day all is so just as their own political 
conduct will admit. To many of them the supply of apparently 
proper wants seems to come harder than ever. Perhaps those 
who gain from the tariff and the monopolies, according to 
established custom, ought not to be censured harshly. Others 
would doubtless do the same in their places. Yet, by the con- 
current action of those who perceive the truth, and of others 
who will perceive it if they open their eyes, the blight of discon- 
tent, from feelings of injustice not without foundation, can be 
and ought to be removed from that considerable section of the 
common people upon whom it has settled. While it is true 
that they must mainly depend for advancement upon their own 
industry and economy — that carrying out all these needed re- 
forms might not benefit a poor man's family many dollars a 
year^ — their life would still be decidedly changed for the better 
by the feeling that all was right in their treatment from society. 
The rich might then enjoy their possessions free from prickings 

^With the Best Government Possible, and with laws for education, 
sanitation, factory regulation, and control of monopolies brought as near per- 
fection as human wisdom will admit, the necessity for morality, intelligence, 
industry, and frugalitj^ by each person for himself, would no doubt remain 
much the same as at present. This seems true because, to avoid making 
conditions worse, so little can be done to relieve people of labor and re- 
sponsibility, and because, however high and equally diffused the civiliza- 
tion, nature further enforces her law of labor by raising people's wants in 
proportion, so that they can never relax effort and rest. To make working 
people realize that their own individual effort must always be the only- 
important source of direct good, would be perhaps the greatest of all help to 
them. The main step toward such help is to clear from many minds, by 
these reasonable concessions, the feeling of justified grievance toward capi- 
talists, which feeling, fanned b)^ the cartoons of sensational papers, caused 
President McKinley's assassin to consider himself a public benefactor. Re- 
moval of grounds for justified discontent will dispose of anarchy more 
effectively than will stern repression. The German government found (as 
employers everywhere are learning in the case of unionism) that repression 
made socialism worse, while admitting its just claims changed it toward 
the position of a reasonable party of reform (Brooks), though the faction 
desiring not to reform the present system, but to abolish It, still largely 
prevails, led by Bebel, in German socialist conventions, and declares In 
resolutions for the cooperative commonwealth. 



The Man With the Hoe. 6y2, 

within and from scowls without. While wrongs and jealousies 
can never be entirely eradicated, there would not be the present 
menace to the future (serious in some respects) from long 
continued abuses, especially after the trust problem had been 
settled, and after captains of industry had been called by law to 
a stricter account of their stewardship for employees and the 
public. Further awakening is needed in the public conscience. 
From Both Sides the Concessions Must Come, and in the 
growing readiness among all classes to turn over a new leaf 
those having intelligence and influence must take the lead. The 
poor have the same reason to reproach the ruling public, for 
not having held them by law, against their own will, to educa- 
tion and sanitation, that a man has to reproach his parents for 
not having forced him to attend school and to learn a trade. 
These chapters on profits and wages have shown chiefly a need 
for reform of ideas and methods among the working classes. 
But they could not be expected to give up the unsound ideas on 
their side, from which they hope to obtain what many of them 
excusably consider just dues, unless the wealthy classes gave 
up their unsound ideas also, from which they have long reaped 
large gains, and for holding which not many of them now are 
involuntarily so ignorant or narrow-minded as to be excusable. 
Are not these few concessions (on the tariff, on trusts, on rail- 
roads and municipal monopolies, and on the extreme claims of 
capital in general) concessions which no discerning mind could 
honestly oppose as endangering American progress, — are not 
these about all that is necessary to virtually end the great con- 
flict between capital and labor? Viewing a future of only 
twenty or thirty years, is anything less than this expedient? 
And whatever may be gained or lost by individuals and classes, 
can anything less be right ?^ 

^The Importance of Removing Discontent. "Our electorate must 
continue more and more to be di voided by that sharp cleavage which sepa- 
rates those who are contented with their lot from those who are discontented 

with their lot They will be sure to remodel the present system for the 

distribution of wealth, unless we have previously done so, upon bases wiser 

and more equitable than those now existing It certainly would tend to 

make private property far more secure in America if the less fortunate ma- 
jority of our population saw us of the more fortunate minority giving cour- 
age and time and thought to efforts to solve these problems and others like 
them, and thereby to lessen some of the evils which in many cases bear so 
heavily and so unjustly upon the poor." (Wayne MacVeagh, Phi Beta 
Kappa address at Harvard University, Public Opinion, July 4, 1901.) 
43 



674 Getting a Living. 

Miss Vida D. Scudder {Atlantic, May, 1902) points out the danger of 
sharp separation between the well-to-do and the voting mass, who brood 
over socialism, and shows the necessity of effort by the thoughtful to bridge 
the chasm, by inducing the rich to admit what is just in the worker's con- 
tentions, and by leading the poor to perceive that society could not live under 
a prevalence of their impulsive and thriftless generosity to one another 
(which to them is morality, regardless of bad results) — under a prevalence 
of their admiration of the corrupt boss for his jobs and kindnesses — and to 
perceive that civilization depends on justice to each according to his work, 
and according to the effect of his conduct on society. 

Injustice Becomes a Nemesis for the Perpetrator. Apart from the 
danger of revolution by the discontented, permitting neglect of the poor, and 
becoming hardened to it, leads to the undermining of societ}^ with other 
forms of injustice, and gives rise, as in Rome, to savagery in refined so- 
ciety — to barbaric display, and to heartless indifference to the suffering of 
one's own employees. It is both a physical and a moral plague that is 
thrown out by the hovel. (Henderson, 269.) vln the South to-day, unless 
those educators and others able to view both sides of the Negro question 
gain more influence than they have had lately, there is great danger that a 
vial of wrath will be filled up for the future, in natural penalties not to be 
met with intimidation. In public as well as in individual affairs God is 
not mocked, and the sowing determines the reaping. Among other things 
the new Alabama law just set aside, providing for sale of Negroes into serf- 
dom to work out fines, indicates that, despite some good reasons for the 
general Southern attitude, the temptation to reduce the Negroes to the status 
of an ancient subject class is threatening to so affect Southern character as 
to unfit it for the progress of to-day, either moral or industrial. No people, 
history proves, that permits the rights of any class to be over-ridden, can 
remain a free people. Next some will gain by over-riding the class next 
above the one first subjected, and so on upward until freedom Is confined 
to a few of the strongest. A spread of Injustice from Negroes to others has 
already begun. A Southern writer {Independent, July 9, 1903, p. 530) 
says he saw a white family, including young children, forced at the muzzle 
of a gun to return to a swamp camp to work out a debt at wages arbi- 
trarily fixed, and largely absorbed in purchase of supplies from the em- 
ployer's commissary. In The Outlook, June 13, 1903, the secretary of a 
society for protecting Italian immigrants tells of Italians taken by deception 
to a West Virginia contractor, in whose camp they were bound and guarded, 
and when about to escape were held for non-payment of board and rail- 
way fare, and even of a charge made for the guarding that intimidated 
them. In this last case there was no bad law, like that set aside in Ala- 
bama, but only ignorance in the Italians, and subservience of local officers. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
PRISON LABOR. 

The Objects of Imprisonment are (i) to punish^ tor crime, 
that others may be deterred from committing it; (2) to further 
protect society by withholding from criminals opportunity to 
commit crime; and (3) to so teach and discipline the prisoner 
that he may be reformed, and become on release an honest and 
industrious citizen. To a large extent labor, as now carried on 
in prisons, is not punishment, but the opposite. The severe 
punishment is solitary confinement in idleness in a cell. Labor 
is the humane means of occupying time. Without it main- 
tenance of discipline is difficult, prisoners' morals are injured, 
and when kept long in idleness many of them break down in 
health and go insane. Moreover, mere v/ork for work's sake 
does not answer. The hard labor of running a treadmill, or 
turning a crank, has been limited or abolished in enlightened 
countries. There is believed to be sufficient punishment in the 
confinement and strict discipline ; and such labor not only 
teaches nothing to be followed after release, but also deadens 
or displaces with bitterness the finer feelings of prisoners, who, 
perceiving its uselessness as to product, feel that its purpose is 
wantonly to add to their misery. 

The Kinds of Labor, therefore, must be those of useful oc- 
cupations. But a belief has become prevalent in many states 
that prisoners should be so employed that their labor will come 

^In the advanced thought of the present day there is earnest objection to 
what is called the barbarous Idea of punishment as retribution, vengeance, 
expiation, or satisfaction of justice, and earnest assertion that the sole object 
of punishment is to deter persons from committing the forbidden acts. But 
apparently it might be replied that the reason why the idea of retribu- 
tion arose at first and continued is that as a deterrent retribution is neces- 
sary, in the form of punishment for the deliberate wrong doer that is 
capable of self-restraint. 

(675) 



6^6 Getting a Living. 

into the least competition with the labor of free men. As every 
stroke of work done by a prisoner, that would otherwise be 
done at all, takes from free men just so much employment, this 
belief would logically lea(i back to the treadmill. That con- 
clusion, however, is avoided, or rather covered, by employing 
prisoners at what seems to be useful work, but in which the 
aim is to bring the product value toward the point of nothing- 
ness. This aim is carried out by having prisoners kill all the 
time they can in working around the prison grounds ; by having 
them work slowly by hand, instead of with machinery turning 
out a product many times greater ; by employing them, at great 
expense. for variety of equipment, in making clothing and sup- 
plies for the prisons and asylums of their state — stringing 
out a quantity of work that could be done in a fraction of the 
time if the object were to make a product instead of to avoid 
one; and by employing them (this is urged, not yet largely 
done), under heavy expense for guarding and sheltering, in 
road improvements that could be made at lower cost by hiring 
free labor at high wages, but which are not wanted sufficiently 
to be made at all if paid for directly. There has been a tendency 
also to keep prison labor from competing with that of high paid 
skilled workers, unionized and politically clamorous, but to let 
it fall against the labor of the unskilled — poor, unorganized, 
and uncomplaining, but subject, far more than the skilled, to 
unemployment, and to danger of being swamped by the flood 
of immigrants. This competition with the unskilled occurs in 
the variety of servant work done about a prison by convicts ; 
in their farming, of which increase is recommended ; and in any 
of their road work that would otherwise be done. Even where 
prisoners produce supplies for state use only, nothing to sell, 
the men in some skilled trades succeed in having their work 
withheld from prisoners, as was done with the state printing in 
New York. Under other systems laws were secured pro- 
hibiting prison production of certain kinds of goods. 

Not to Make a Profit From the Labor of Prisoners would 
be a good policy for the state if largest results could thus be 
attained in making them honest and useful. The state could 
well afford a net loss of $i,ooo on a prisoner for a short term 
if by such a loss he could be changed from an enemy of society 



Prison Labor. Gyy 

into a good citizen. But loss and expense in keeping him do 
not bring such a result. The opposite is nearer the truth, that 
is, that saving money saves him. A waste of labor and of 
money tends here, as elsewhere, to bring a waste of men. The 
treadmill is not hidden to intelligent prisoners in work that is 
obviously lacking in product. On account of its ease it may 
not be to them embittering punishment ; but perceiving the 
sham, they must lose spirit and drop into dullness or into time 
killing. What else, besides such occupation, could better pre- 
vent formation of the habit of real work — always measured by 
product ? And what kind of preparation for making an honest 
living on release, in this age of machinery, are hand trades 
chosen because not cared for by free men, or hand methods and 
skill not wanted by employers ? It is mainly in learning to do 
and like real and useful work that reformation comes, and with 
prisoners, as with boys learning a trade, there is probably 
nothing that so inspires one with self-respect and purpose as to 
become able, not only to do one's work well, but to do thus a 
kind of work that is recognized as being up-to-date. Holding 
convicts to kinds of work not cared for marks them as inferior, 
and has some of the depressing effect of requiring them to wear 
striped clothes. Hence, prison labor, to answer its purposes, 
must actually produce valuable goods ; and moreover, must do 
so in the most profitable way for the suitable trades chosen. Of 
the poor convict, and of the tax-paying public, nature was not 
unmindful. 

Selling Prison-Made Goods at Cut Prices, and thus taking 
the customers of employers of free labor and displacing their 
men, can come about only because prison goods are undesirable. 
It is through increasing quantity alone that low cost of a prod- 
uct affects its price. The man picking up a nugget of gold on 
the surface sand sells it for no less per ounce than another man 
sells gold dust he has sweated and bled for. The farmer rais- 
ing forty bushels of wheat per acre, on land it is a pleasure to 
till, gets just as high a price as the farmer raising but ten, on 
the rockiest land imaginable. The prison contractor, though he 
pays but thirty-five cents a day for labor, gets as high a price 
as he can. If quality of prison goods is poor, the price ought 
to be low, or the buyer would be cheated. Low price for goods 



678 ■ Getting a Living. 

of poor quality made outside of prisons causes producers of 
good qualities little concern. In nearly every trade there are 
employers of all grades, including many that pay very low 
wages. Why, apart from poor quality, are prison goods undesir- 
able ? Because dealers handling them are liable to be boycotted 
by trade unionists ; because in some states the law requires pris- 
on goods to be labeled, or exacts a special license tax from a 
dealer handling them ; and because the Industrial Commission 
has asked Congress to permit any state to prohibit their ship- 
ment into its territory. What other effect could this crusade 
have but to make prison goods cheap, and to bring still lower 
the daily pay a contractor will give for a convict's labor? — 
poor enough at best, constantly changing in the release of pris- 
oners, and coming largely from men of idle or vicious habits, 
who must first be taught to work, and who have not the encour- 
agement of receiving wages. And where could be found a 
better case of the irony of fate — or rather, of a violated natural 
law — than in the well deserved effect of this crusade to make the 
very cheapness complained of, which would not otherwise exist, 
any further than lower quality justly required. It is idle to 
dwell on the low wages (35 to 75 cents a day) paid by con- 
tractors for the labor of prisoners within the walls. If there is 
too much profit in it, why do not others become contractors and 
pay more ?^ At times bids have been advertised for in vain, and 
many contractors have failed or withdrawn. A shirt maker 
using only half of 300 prisoners hired at 35 cents each per day is 
surrendering a ten year contract two years before expiration, 
the waste in material and oversight being enormous, since few 
of the prisoners work willingly or care how much trouble they 
cause. For convict labor or goods, or anything else publicly 
offered, the only statement of value to be considered is in the 
talking men do with their money. All this cheapness shows 
just what prison labor and prison goods are worth, under the 
odium covering them.^ 

^The pristfn labor contention is here as contradictory as was the claim 
in a boycott case (page 222) that other firms would reduce wages because 
of competition from "cheap and inferior" machine-hooped barrels, of which 
"as high as 47 out of 50" had been returned as defective. 

'A Case of the Boomerang. Dealers and consumers who bravely buy 



Prison Labor. 679 

Public Losses From Prison Labor Agitation have been 
heavy. In a number of states, contractors paying yearly large 
sums into the prison treasury, clearing sufficient profit to oper- 
ate permanently, paying wages corrected periodically by new 
bids for the prisoner's labor, and sending out goods to whose 
competition business was everywhere adjusted, — have been dis- 
placed to make way for manufacture on state account ; and 
the latter system, when the officials had set up costly equipment 
and learned to produce and sell to some advantage, had then to 
give way in some states to making clothing and supplies for 

prison goods do not gain the intrinsic value not covered by the low price. 
That value, being balanced by the useless odium and risk incurred in buy- 
irvg, is thrown into the sea. To prove unfairness of prison competition it is 
customary to cite an experience in Illinois, in which growth of barrel manu- 
facture in the state prisons, about the year i886, took business from Chicago 
coopers employing free labor. In this case, unlike that of tariff protection, 
punishment came to the industry intended to be defended by the hue and cry 
against prison goods, and benefit came to other industries. One can imagine 
Mother Nature here laughing in her sleeve at the vagaries of her children. 
The large supply of prison barrels sold cheaply, if buyers were not followed 
by the boycott, was a benefit to build up Chicago meat packing and brew- 
ing, as cheap coal built up Pittsburgh, and made it famous for large 
employment and high wages. If the boycott and hostile laws prevented 
shipment of the barrels empty, and consequently prevented rise of their price, 
they were to Chicago packers, like favoring freight rates, another source 
of monopoly advantage — the benefit falling to the last people that working- 
men desired to favor. For the poverty of displaced Chicago coopers, of 
which harrowing accounts were given in reports to the legislature, there 
might have been two simple remedies. First, calling off the crusade might 
have spread the prison barrels over a wide area, raising their price to the 
natural level, and giving free coopers employment. Second, when from 
improved machinery or other cause the product of a man's labor is no longer 
wanted, the thing for him to do is to go where it is wanted, or produce 
something else. Society is ready to teach and help him for such changes, 
by which progress comes, and whose displacement of workers is overbalanced 
by employment in making new things. It is easier for a few^ in his trade 
to change their work than to force millions of people to change their wants; 
and any tax they bear, by wasting prison labor in order to help free men, 
is as truly charity as if the gift to the latter were doled out to them by the 
overseer of the poor. When by previous change work came to them from 
other trades, there was no guarantee that in a future change they would 
not in turn have to yield to others in the same way. In all conscience, the 
mass of consumers have little enough, without making laws to waste labor 
and reduce society's flow of supplies. 



68o Getting a Living. 

state institutions. Working convicts on roads has been pre- 
vented in the Northern States by fear of the degrading effect on 
the prisoners of pubHc disgrace, and of the hardening effect 
on people's sympathies of habitually seeing men at work under 
guard. As a rule, one of these changes results in loss to the 
state of scores of thousands of dollars, interrupts discipline 
among prisoners, increases political jobbery with new positions 
and with purchases of new equipment, aggravates previously 
adjusted prison competition with free labor, and fans the falla- 
cious agitation. 

The Right Policy, however, learned from a costly experi- 
ence, is gradually coming to prevail. In the South labor union- 
ism and its agitation have not been sufficient to win much sup- 
port for the policy of wasting prison labor that more work may 
be left for free men. But needed reforms there have been 
brought about by humane public opinion. Leasing Negro con- 
victs to railroad contractors and mine operators (the easiest and 
most profitable way for the state to utilize their labor) involved 
for many years cases of cruel treatment, with little or no attempt 
to teach or reform, though the out-door work was much health- 
ier for the Negroes than factory confinement would have been. 
The lease system is passing away ; and where it remains state 
officials accompany the prisoners and protect them from the con- 
tractor's natural tendency to waste their life for his own gain. 
In some of the most enlightened and prosperous Northern 
States, notably Michigan and Connecticut, the prison labor 
question has apparently settled down to what is evidently the 
right policy, though not without recurring agitation for costly 
and harmful changes. For the first consideration, that of teach- 
ing and reforming the prisoners, these states keep them, whether 
hired by contractors or not, under constant control of prison 
officials. The prisoners' labor is used in the most profitable 
way opportunity affords, that by lightening taxation the state 
may leave as much money as possible in its people's pockets, 
and that for this money they may choose from the largest pos- 
sible supply of useful things. Most of the labor is hired to con- 
tractors, making inside the walls, in the state's buildings, some- 
times with its steam power, shirts, shoes, cigars, brooms, wag- 
ons, implements, tombstones, etc. Prison labor is sold, as oppor- 



Prison Labor. 68i 

tunity may lead, by the day of eight hours (the usual way), or 
at a piece price bid by the contractor for the quantity of labor 
done. Prisoners not taken by contractors, especially the weak 
and the aged, are worked on state account — that is, the state, 
through the prison warden, carries on a business, buying ma- 
terials, and selling the product. Where the management is 
capable, the warden gets for the goods, whatever the cost of the 
labor, every dollar that the agitation will let them bring. The 
success he seeks, in connection w^ith good discipline and re- 
formation, is to make the prison self-supporting. In the main 
prison of Michigan most of the 800 prisoners are hired by con- 
tractors, the only state account manufacture being box making, 
employing about 25 men ; but Minnesota, on state account, pro- 
duces binding twine on a large scale, Tennessee and Kansas 
operate coal mines, and Alabama operates a cotton factory. 
Everywhere, as a rule, convicts work a prison farm, repair 
prison buildings, and sometimes erect them new. 

Losses and Failures Will Open People's Eyes. The com- 
mon sense methods of the Michigan prisons have recently been 
considered, with a view to adoption, by several large states 
which lost heavily by changing from the contract system to the 
state account, and by crippling the latter system by forbidding 
use of machinery, by confining the work to making supplies for 
state institutions, or by restricting the prison output of an arti- 
cle to a small percentage of the total output of it in the state 
from free labor. Big deficits in prison finances to be met from 
taxes, and a realization of the fact that the essence of work, for 
discipline as well as for gain, is the making of product value, 
will gradually enable all the states to shuffle off the nightmare 
fear of prison competition, and to perceive that, in the scarcity 
to which most people are subject, to waste knowingly a prison- 
er's labor, in order to make employment for a free man, is as 
wicked as burning a loaf of bread to enable the baker to sell 
another. Of course there w^ould be some evil in suddenly 
transferring five hundred prisoners from one industry to an- 
other. The advantage to free labor in the one abandoned 
might be outweighed by the injury to it in the one taken up. 
But if the prison goods could flow anywhere to the best market, 
the- disturbance would be no greater than when made outside of 



682 Getting a Living. 

prison walls. All the time new factories are being built, to be 
operated largely by labor added to the trade, and other factories 
in it are being closed. If the country's total output of some com- 
modity were niade in prisons, its free producers might be harmed 
but little if the prisons took the industry gradually, and might 
be benefited after trade had become adjusted to the change. 
Trades suited to reform prisoners they are entitled to, but to 
have them produce all, or too nearly all, of a commodity would 
leave- them no trade to follow on release, or would make the 
trade a disgrace to them. These objections, it seems, must 
prevent adoption of the idea that prisoners might do society's 
worst kinds of drudgery. Where prison labor is left alone, to 
be used in the best way arising, changes in prison industry are 
few and gradual, and the effect of the changes, as of the labor, 
is to benefit the prisoners and all the people. In many of the 
states the question seems to be reaching this happy stage. In 
1901 several states passed laws permitting additional lines of 
work to be pursued in prisons.^ 

^The Income From Prison Labor generally falls far short of meeting 
the prison's expenses. But a few states, including Vermont, Missouri and 
Florida, with others in the flush times of 1901-3, have gained from their 
prisons a small profit, while Tennessee's profit was the large sum of $284,281 
for the two years ending with 1902, which sum was only $24,238 more than 
the profit for the preceding two years. New York state has passed through 
all the changes of prison labor, and is now becoming adjusted to manu- 
facture for public use alone, though by sound tests its change several years 
ago to this system is by some considered a failure. The change in Illinois 
was so clearly a failure that there was a return to state account production 
for market. There was also a return to previous systems in Indiana. The 
contract system is provided for in 28 states, the piece price in 6, the lease in 
25, the state account in 47, and the state use in 24, though in the latter no 
others seem to have gone so far as New York, whose constitution of 1895 
forbids adoption of the other systems or production for general sale. The 
changes from the contract system began about the year 1875, with agitation 
and lobbying by labor unions and by employers competed against. Previous 
to that time gain to the state treasury was the main consideration, there 
being little thought of competition with free labor, and too little attention 
to teaching and reforming prisoners. (See the Industrial Commission's 
volume on prison labor.) 

The New State Use System. In view of Carroll D. Wright's state- 
ment, in his book of 1902, "Ethical Phases of the Labor Question," that 
prison labor has little efl^ect on prices and wages, it seems that his qualified 
approval there of the state use system might be taken to mean that it is 



Prison Labor. 683 

The Poisonous Idea at the bottom of the prison labor agita- 
tion, and of tariff protection, sociaHsm, and other false doc- 
trines in economics, is so widespread and persistent that its 

best under the present agitation. To employ by this plan all of New York's 
prisoners it will be necessary to devote much time to mere teaching, to 
produce by hand, and to do drain and road work not wanted at a money 
price to free men. The state's need for goods is varied and irregular, and 
would be far more inadequate in states smaller or poorer. Besides the 
absence of machinery, the guaranteed sale takes away the warden's incen- 
tive to produce quickly or well. The convicts know that it is only prison 
production, not like that of the outside world. It seems well for the United 
States to use as it does all the labor in its Leavenworth prison to make army 
supplies, and for states to prepare stone for public buildings and for roads; 
but to do this further than is advantageous to the state and its prisoners, 
and especially to forbid prison production for general sale, is giving way 
to the false and pestiferous idea that competition from prison labor must be 
worse than from other labor. 

Unconstitutional Prison Laws. Irf New York state, where, in order to 
sell prison goods, one must pay a yearly license tax of $500 and give a bond 
for $5,000, the law requiring such goods to be branded "convict-made" 
was in 1898 declared unconstitutional, on the ground that it attempted to 
raise prices artificially for those trades followed in prisons, but not for other 
trades. It seems that New York's law requiring cities and school districts 
to buy its prison goods would be, under the fallacious reason, unconstitu- 
tional by the rule that the state cannot take away the city's right of choice 
in local affairs. (Chapter XIX.) Also, because no permanent good but 
only harm can be the result, the license tax (when not for revenue) would 
seem to be unconstitutional, and the proposed congressional permission of 
states to prohibit shipment into their territory of prison-made goods. 

Giving a Product Away w-ould not depress prices long. Persons out 
of reach of the free supply would have to buy as before, and pay enough to 
keep labor and capital producing. In the frontier town one does not attempt 
to beat down the wood hauler's price by threatening to go out a mile and 
get wood free. One is afraid of being told to go and try it. The same is 
true of beating down wages. There is probably not a man at work in the 
whole country for whose place another might not easily be found at lower 
pay. In every trade there is always a residuum of unemployed, but as their 
work will not answer they are outside of the margin, and their idleness does 
not endanger wages above them. Mr. Webb is greatly concerned, on the 
one hand, over price lowering forced by need on the garret master hawking 
his wares along Curtain Row, and, on the other hand, over price lowering 
yielded to by the state in producing without having to regard cost at all. 
He seems to think that even the unemployable, the defective, should be 
separated by the state, as their presence means "a disastrous lowering of 
pay for the entire wage earning class." ("Industrial Democracy," 787.) 



684 Getting a Living. 

fallacy must be further explained here, though at the risk of 
repeating somewhat from other chapters. It is *'the same old 
serpent" of monopoly, the dragon that was stunned but not 
killed by Adam Smith, acting as St. George. The demand that 
the state waste the labor of prisoners, to give free men more 
employment, might be extended to encourage private loafing. 
It is not perceived that any kind of income — wages or profits, 
a good or a poor living — is chiefly a matter of product. The 
utmost reform in the distribution of wealth would not greatly 
change conditions. The more labor power is wasted in a state, 
the less its yearly product will be. With every person steadily 
employed in the work at which his product was the largest and 
most desired, there would be in the state the highest money 
wages, and the largest aggregate sums in profit, in interest, and 
in rent ; the largest improvement in new houses, factories, and 
schools (new capital saved) ; the steadiest business and surest 
market (all able to buy), and hence the briskest demand for 
labor; the fastest accumulation of all property, reducing each 
person's share of taxes ; and the most plentiful and best variety 
of useful things for everybody, and at the lowest prices. That 
is the ideal condition, unattainable of course, because many 
will not work, many cannot find the work they can do best, 
and employers often cannot tell which goods are wanted most. 
The Welfare of Each Depends Upon Work by All. Going 
to the other extreme, anybody can see that if half the workers 

The workers must be feeble bargainers indeed, and skill quite valueless. 
The employer without need, having a mine yielding ten times the profit 
rate of other mines, or having a bonanza factory, is the very one who, with 
good qualities and prompt delivery, gets the best prices. Some prison con- 
tractors now are actually selling higher than do competitors. But if prison 
goods were sold wastefully low — if their sellers were business incompetents, 
as is assumed in the agitation — they would soon have no effect on that de- 
mand they left unsupplied, — not only with prison product, as at present, 
an infinitesimal proportion of the total, but with prison product comprising 
nine-tenths of it. That part of the continuing supply costing most makes 
the price in dull times also. The one whose producing cost is least deter- 
mines how far price can fall, but he lowers it no further than is necessary 
to sell all his product. When buyers go to another producer the latter 
knows that his product too is needed, and that market price is (disconnected 
from the low price the rich competitor would descend to if demand were 
smaller. 



Prison Labor. 685 

in the state were idle, this half would have no income, and a 
poor living, coming from savings or charity. There would be 
none of the wages, profit, and interest previously obtained from 
their product, and the supply of useful things for all would be 
cut down by its amount. As the idle men would be getting 
nothing to buy with, the income of all others would be reduced 
by a terrible depression. If instead of being idle all these men 
were in a state army, the living furnished them by the state 
would be taxed from the half at work, while the living of each 
of the two sections, as well as total product, would be but half 
the full amount (not allowing for diminishing return from land 
and capital). If the idle half were not engaged as soldiers, 
they would still live on the other half, as dependent relatives or 
paupers.^ 

^In Some Army-Ridden or Debt-Ridden Countries the taxes actually 
take a quarter or a third of the year's crop or other product. The estimate 
for Italy is a full third. Removal of the military tax from German industry 
and consumption, if general peace permitted, would so add to net income 
from the same product that in producing it the soldiers and all might be 
employed at the old money wages, but fewer hours per day. What now 
supports the soldiers in taxes would then support them in wages. They all 
now live on the product, produced without help from the soldiers, and taxes 
so encroach on the money proceeds from product that wages are distress- 
ingly low. The government has nothing to draw on, to support its soldiers 
and officials, but its people's annual product. The German war chest is 
for emergency, not to live on year by year. The benefit from an army in 
making employment — set forth in the book of 1899, "Can We Disarm?" — 
was understood by the pioneer who had to station two sons with rifles to 
watch for Indians, while he and another son tried to raise a crop to maintain 
the family. 

Competing and Patronizing. Use of money does not change the sit- 
uation described in the text above. Producers have the goods they make, or 
other goods traded for, or money with which to buy other goods. All they 
have comes from their product, as truly as if there were no money and no 
exchange. If each man kept what he raised, without trading, and especially 
without use of the middle commodity, money, the whole matter would be 
plain to the dullest person. The idleness of one man benefits another who 
gets his job, but takes work from men in every industry whose product the 
idle man must then cease buying. If he had kept his job, and the other man 
had secured additional work, the total market and work of all others would 
have been increased by the amount of the latter's wages. Only by com- 
peting with the others in working, can a man patronize others in buying. 
He competes with a few men in one trade, but patronizes many men in 



686 Getting a Living. 

How Government Expense Falls on Wage Workers. Thus 
it would work, in the same proportion, if 800 prisoners were 
idle, or employed on something not wanted if bought with 
money. What they failed to earn for their own support 
would then come from taxation. And so it is with one use- 
less clerk in the state's service, who adds nothing to total prod- 
uct. The fact that his $900 salary is a small part of several 
millions spent by the state annually, does not prevent the 
piling up of what in many a state or city is an aggregate 
yearly waste of many thousands composed of small sums. 
That $900 taken in ten-dollar reductions from the taxes of 
ninety farmers would in many cases so encourage one that 
he would spend $30 additional next year in wages, and add 
enough energy to his farming to increase his product by $150. 
Taxation, because its increase falls on each citizen in small 
sums, is not an inexhaustible mine. When the many who pay 
taxes notice that the money is spent wastefully with the few 
who receive it, business is weakened by a feeling of injustice 
and discouragement, and by desire to join the favored few. 
The wage worker, too, it has been said, is the most heavily 
taxed of all, though he makes no direct payment to the tax 
collector. He pays taxes in prices raised by the tariff, and in 
the net effect of all governmental or societal evil to raise prices 
by making things scarce, and hence to lessen employment for 
labor to produce them. When from excessive taxation, or other 
reason, business results are unsatisfactory, the first thought of 
the typical employer is to lay off men, or harden his effort to 
decrease the wages paid and increase the work done. In 

many trades. Under civilized division of labor and exchange, one person, 
in order to live, must be willing to let live, and among his competitors as 
well as his customers. His customers are able to buy of him, partly because 
his competitors buy of them. In society's growing wants, a wage worker 
competing for employment will not, unless men helplessly cling to their jobs, 
lower wages in his own trade below the level in other trades for the same 
grade or work. The nearer everybody comes to working at his best, the 
richer the society, and the larger its demand for goods and for labor to 
make them. The best place to sell goods, and to get employment, is not 
where the men loaf around the stores, apparently leaving the jobs for new- 
comers, but where every job is eagerly taken. Demand for labor makes a 
town busy, but its busy condition, giving all plenty to spend, makes the de- 
mand for labor still greater^ 



Prison Labor. 687 

France the estimate is, that in time spent in the army, and in 
prices raised by tariff and internal taxes, wage workers pay in 
taxation a full fifth of the income of their working life — 
twenty cents out of every dollar.^ 

^But the State is the Most Important of all Institutions in society, 
so necessary to secure the justice required for production that without gov- 
ernment in some form the lowest tribe would starve within a year, or dwin- 
dle to a few of the strongest. To fulfill its functions with best results, in 
promoting largest production of goods and services, with greatest well-being 
and progress, the state and local government should have the best man in 
each office, well paid, diligently earning his salary but not overworked, and 
enough such men to perform well all that it seems the state ought to do. 
Efforts by all others to obtain state positions, though of some educational 
value to them (even swindling is highly educational), cause them to neglect 
their business, reducing product, and tend to increase the number of useless 
public employees. Office seeking, with the scheming involved, though un- 
avoidable to some extent, is an evil when many persons engage in it. 
Philosophers object to calling government a necessary evil, because, like 
working and dying, it is an important factor in the processes of nature, 
and because, as stated above, the necessit}^ for it makes it the greatest good. 
But while a government ought to do all that it can do with permanently 
best results for its people, it is clear that as drudging and dying are kept to 
the minimum, so ought the government burden, and also because too much 
governing Is as bad or worse than too little. The less of such a burden is 
required, the smaller is its tax on the people's product — the fewer of them are 
taken from adding to the product and turned to subtracting from it. 

The Experience of France. M. Desmoulins, in a notable book pub- 
lished about the year 1898, shows that one reason for lack of progress in 
France, besides the practice of waiting to be helped with an inheritance and 
a dowry, is the general desire of Frenchmen to get positions with the govern- 
ment (which, except in its tobacco factories and navy yards, directly 
produces nothing), instead of to engage in business, to develop resources, 
and to make wealth for themselves and their country. The rapid progress 
of the Americans and the English he traces to their habit of each person's 
going ahead for himself, without relying on the government. But in France, 
despite the people's industry and frugalitv', feeding at the public crib has 
seriously depleted the ranks of those engaged in its replenishing. Trade is 
not growing; the national debt has increased by $1,800,000,000 in twenty- 
five years of peace, being now $6,000,000,000, much the largest in the world, 
and the deficit has lately been about $25,000,000 a year, with everything 
taxed so closely that more can scarcely be raised. These are facts to com- 
pare with those concerning Australia (page 340). Managing and book- 
keeping are essential, but in a factory they must not employ many of the 
force. Such is the case with a nation's governing. It was partly because of 
the division of Kentucky into too many counties (132) that contests over 



688 Getting a Living. 

Why the Cause of Labor is Retarded. Besides violence in 
strikes, it is largely because of their connection with small 
selfish schemes — agitation against convict and contract labor, 
and agitation to induce the government to start enterprises in 
which by political influence they can hire themselves with public 
money — that workingmen are only half armed in their struggle 
to gain from the capitalistic class all that is yet wrongly with- 
held. It is not enough to be the under dog. If the weaker 
party were always right, then the strongest nation, the United 
States, must be wrong every time in a contest of war or diplo- 
macy. It is only on grounds of right that the laboring classes 
can hope to secure real concessions. Unlike corporations, they 
cannot spend tens of thousands in employing the ablest lawyers 
to lobby in the legislature for or against proposed laws, or to 
present doubtful schemes to the public in the shrewdest way to 
win support. They cannot give free passes to men of influence ; 
nor can they win favor with superior railway service, with 
great business-making industries, or with princely gifts to 
colleges. Working people cannot well buy or force the grant- 
ing of legislative favors that will prove effective. They cannot 
compete with the other side in such methods. Their patronage 
is not the most profitable or desirable, and the promises given 
for their votes are likely to prove evasive or deceptive when 
their demands are for unworkable measures. Besides, a man 
who abjectly surrenders his own convictions to get votes is not 
the safest to depend on. 

Those Workingmen and Farmers who have engaged in 
agitation for unsound favors, if they were to unite with the 
large class who have no political desire but the welfare of all, 
could probably bring about, by clearly defined demand of the 
parties, the abolition of a number of monopolistic privileges 
now enjoyed by the rich at the expense of all others. The 
corporations, whose wealth and ability will always secure for 
them the lion's share in a contest for favors, cannot be expected 
to cease controlling legislatures in their own interest so long as 
unwise and unjust laws against them are continually being 
proposed. It is not altogether the fault of corporations that 

petty offices absorbed too much of the local ability, leading to feuds and 
consequent danger to all, until getting a living by raising and making things 
has sunk in some counties to a low ebb. 



Prison Labor. 689 

they maintain a powerful lobby to watch the legislature, and 
that by raising prices they charge back on the people the lobby 
expenses. In some sessions, perhaps, the corporations do 
wrong, by urging bad legislation, less often than their oppo- 
nents, whose persistent attacks the lobby is employed to guard 
against. Where money is corruptly used by corporations it is 
often to meet these attacks, sometimes made by unscrupulous 
legislators for the very purpose of being bought off. If the 
laboring and farming classes were more nearly free from blame 
themselves, and were intelligently active to secure their own 
rights while helping to promote exact justice for all, there 
might be an overwhelming majority of right-minded public 
opinion, before which corporate aggression would soon cease 
to be a menace. Since most of the people, workingmen and 
farmers included, honestly desire to support the right, a little 
more intelligence, to enable them to perceive it, would go far 
in removing public abuses. It is for the majority to say when 
abuses shall cease. Legislatures and city councils are just 
what the people make them. 



44 



CHAPTER XXVII 

CONCILIATION, ARBITRATION, AND COLLECTIVE 
BARGAINING 

To Prevent the Frequent Loss of Millions of Dollars by 

strikes and lockouts, not only employers and wage workers, but 
society as a whole, may well make arduous efforts. These 
losses include, besides wages and profits given up during the 
strike and not secured later, the wages and profits of many who 
furnish supplies to the concern involved and to its employees. 
Railroad men to the number of 25,000 had to be laid off by the 
end of the first ten days of the anthracite coal strike of 1902, 
because shipments from and to the coal mines had ceased. The 
losses include also sometimes the wages and profits of indus- 
tries that depend upon the idle concerns for materials to operate 
upon, and include sometimes heavy expense to the state or 
county for troops, and deputy sheriffs, as well as damage to 
mines from filling with water. In the coal strike mentioned 
the lack of fuel not only closed many factories for a time, and 
damaged cities by necessitating the use of dirty soft coal, but 
by curtailing total supply the strike brought on a fuel famine, 
increasing cost to the people of the winter's fuel by tens of 
millions of dollars, and causing among the poor much suffering 
from cold. The dread of a large strike, and of its paralyzing 
effect on consumption of goods by the people involved, is ^hown 
in its tendency to check business in many lines, and over a wide 
area. Sometimes much of the business of a concern closed by a 
strike is taken by competitors and never recovered ; and some- 
times a concern struck against is bankrupted, or a shop is closed 
by transfer of its business to other shops of the same employer. 
Suffering from want is occasionally endured by strikers and 
their families, and loss of position often comes to many in case 
of a strike's failure. Ill feeling between employer and work 
people mars local peace, fans class antagonism, and lessens the 

(690) 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 691 

amount of wealth produced. The country would be richer and 
happier if there were no strikes or lockouts. 

But Peace Secured by Habitually Giving Way to injustice 
on either side could not be thought of. The loss in independent 
manhood with workers, in righteousness of character with 
employers, and eventually in production of wealth, would then 
far outweigh, to the persons directly concerned and to society, 
the present losses from discord. Peace, to be desirable, must 
be based on justice to all. With a working class unable in 
mind and will to strike, modern industry and democracy could 
not continue ; while an employer who granted demands indis- 
criminately would soon disappear from business, and if many 
employers did so industry would break down and anarchy set 
in. Additional wages gained by a strike may not only over- 
balance in a few years the strike losses to the workmen, but for 
the indefinite future the strike may secure the higher wages to 
these, may enable other men of the same trade to get such an 
advance without striking, and may similarly benefit men in 
separate trades, besides the benefit from such success to char- 
acter. An employer may get and cause net gain of the same 
kinds by successfully resisting a strike. 

That No Strike Results in Net Loss to the working class 
is believed by some persons. This seems to be very nearly 
true, so long as employers do not sink to the yielding mood 
which would make the success of iinjust strikes calamitous to 
society, in opening the way to decline of industry, and to rise 
of anarchy or despotism. The belief seems about true also of 
strike failures, to which alone it is usually meant to refer. 
Those taking the vacated places better their condition. The 
loss to the employer, though he wins, will prevent him and 
others from risking future strikes by resisting just demands. 
Business lost to other employers makes new positions for de- 
feated strikers.^ Building delayed prolongs the active season, 

^In the coal strike of 1902 the decrease of output by $46,000,000 was only 
partially a loss, under the increase later and rising price, with the keeping 
underground of coal approaching exhaustion. Most of what the railways 
lost in freight, $28,000,000, will come to them later. The decrease of $25,- 
000,000 in total wages was not all loss to men losing nearly a third of each 
year in idleness. Chicago's loss of a million dollars a day in the freight 
handlers' strike of 1902 was chiefly gained by merchants elsewhere. The 



692 Getting a Living. 

or if it is abandoned because the boom has passed there may be 
less over-investment and more free capital for production need- 
ed, though on the contrary there may be lasting loss from 
failure to take advantage of the tide in the affairs of men. The 
strikers and other workers learn to avoid the causes of the 
failure ; while the loss of positions may be largely balanced by 
securing places that are better, and by the increase of capacity 
to move and find work. Owing to need for most of these 
effects, strikes that fail are less to be regretted than other 
calamities that finally result in good. Strikes and lockouts 
are therefore desirable until a more peaceable method has been 
established for settling disputes without weak surrender by 
either side to injustice. The money losses stated in the note 
below,^ doubtless reduced materially by a strike's effect to lessen 

case was similar with the Burlington's fall of net earnings from $11,478,165 
to $4,906,707, mainly by reason of its engineers' strike of 1888, unionism's 
loss being that it was excluded from the road until lately (p. 544) ; but it 
is said that most of the Burlington engineers are in the brotherhood now. 
The thirty-week strike (a failure) in 1897 of the British machinists' union 
cost It $1,104,695 from Its funds, and cost It the opening of all shops to non- 
unionists. 

'^Statistics of Strikes In the United States, in the twenty years ending 
with 1900, were given by Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner 
of Labor, In the North American Revteiv for June, 1902, his figures being 
taken from the labor department report of 1901. The number of strikes was 
22,793; establishments affected, 117,509; emploj^ees Idle, 6,105,694; average 
number of days Idle, 24; loss In wages, $257,836,478; loss to employers, 
$122,731,121; assistance given to strikers by labor unions, $16,174,793; 
strikes succeeding, 51 per cent; strikes succeeding partly, 13 per cent; strikes 
falling, 36 per cent. Of all the strikes 63 per cent were declared by per- 
manent unions, the remainder by men uniting temporarily, the percentage of 
success being larger with the former. Lockouts by employers numbered 
1,005 in 9>933 establishments, with wage loss $48,819,745, employers' loss 
$19,927,983, and assistance from unions to Idle men $3,451,461; of these 
lockouts 51 per cent succeeded, 6 per cent succeeded partly, and 43 per cent 
failed. Of the strikes 72 per cent were In six Industries, the building trades 
having most, followed In order by the coal, metal, clothing, tobacco, and 
transportation industries. As to causes of strikes, 29 per cent. In number 
of establishments, were for increase of wages, 11 per cent for this and re- 
duction of hours, II per cent for reduction of hours alone, 7 per cent against 
reduction of wages (less successful than for increase, owing to declining 
demand), 3.47 per cent, were In sympathy with strikes elsewhere, 2.34 
against non-unionists, 1.40 for recognition of union, .91 for enforcement of 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 693 

later slackness of work, would not carry on for a single year a 
war of much consequence. The good effects of strikes seem 
therefore to cost very much less in money than the good effects 
of war, and with other costs certainly not greater. Both war 
and strikes should be avoided as far as possible, but not by 
surrenders far more calamitous. 

State Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, now estab- 
lished in a number of states, and in foreign lands, are doubtless 
a wise means to be provided by law for securing to the public 
the great advantage of just industrial peace. Most of the labor 
troubles could be avoided if the parties on both sides were less 
suspicious and less hostile in attitude, less peremptory in de- 
mands, more reasonable, and hence more ready to admit just 
contentions. Seldom does either side consciously desire to 
wrong the other, or even to retaliate. The main source of 
trouble is unwillingness to view the question from both sides, 
as every question must be viewed to be decided rightly.^ Both 

union rules, .74 for reinstatement of men discharged. Occasionally men go 
on strike because the employer refuses to withhold from a man's wages a 
union fine or assessment. 

British strikes and lockouts together in 1898 numbered 711 ; strikers idle 
and men locked out, 200,769 ; other employees left idle, 53,138 ; total of work- 
ing days lost, 15,289,478. In 1897 (the year of the machinists' strike) the 
days lost were 10,345,523, and in 1901 they were 4,142,287. In no other year 
since 1895 have the days lost numbered 4,000,000, though the number of 
disputes in 1896 was 926. Germany had 1,056 strikes and lockouts in 1901, 
and France 902. 

^What Demand is Just? Employees are at fault when their demand for 
higher pay, per hour or per piece, encroaches on the marginal employer's 
necessary profits under prevailing industrial conditions, and when demand 
for their labor is not sufficient to admit of raising the margin to employers 
able to pay more. Without a prospect of rising prices, or a readiness to 
balance higher wages by investing in better machinery, the marginal em- 
ployer would then suspend, and leave his men idle, rather than grant the 
demand. He himself may be at fault because he does not frankly prove to 
them, by showing his books without dissembling or withholding, how low 
his profits are. Desire for too much profit may be less a fault with him 
than proud unwillingness to explain. If not reliably informed as to profits, 
workmen can only estimate and guess. They must consider profits in some 
way if they are really to do their part in the bargaining. Reasonableness 
with them might make the employer reasonable too, and vice versa. As 
wages are paid in advance whtn profit is not yet known, the employer is 
properly guided by the lowest average likely to be realized. No more per- 



694 Getting a Living. 

view points must of course be taken by society. Its highest 
interest is eventually the highest interest of all the persons 
concerned directly. Their interests are antagonistic, in that the 
larger is the share of one side the smaller is the remainder for 
the other ; but are reciprocal in that for either side continuance 
of a desirable contract depends upon justice toward and con- 
tentment in the other. The interests of both sides are identical 
in obtaining, from mutual cooperation and from the various 
other causes, prosperous conditions for their industry. In point- 
ing out, as disinterested third parties representing the public, 
the fair and proper course to take, a state board of conciliation, 

haps than safety requires does the probability of gaining more over-balance 
the risk of gaining less. If the employer is running at a loss, his business 
cannot be taken as the basis for the union rate of a town having other em- 
ployers doing better. It is upon the average employer that this rate is based. 
If an employer gets large profit, from a mine, a patent, or a business well 
established, a demand cannot be based on his case, since what he could 
afford to pay would close out the employers below him. If the marginal 
or average employer's profit rate (apparently to last some time) permits an 
Increase of pay, workmen are justified in demanding it, though men of their 
grade in other trades cannot get a similar increase. By such steps higher 
pay is established. The good work required under it will hold it against 
inflow of new men. If the marginal employer, though his profit be high, 
can get suitable men for less than the usual pay of his trade, he has a right 
to lower it. Inflow of capital into building and enlarging plants then bene- 
fits new men employed, perhaps raising their pay above what the}^ earned 
in other trades, and lowers price to consumers. As to demanding more pay 
because the rate is below a living wage, a favorite reason in some British 
trades, see pages 144, 330, 432. 

Conciliators and Arbitrators Consider the employer's profit rate on a 
proper valuation for his business, the profits earned and wages paid by em- 
ployers competing with him, the cost of living as fixing real wages, the real 
and money wages for the same work in other towns and for similar work 
in other trades, and from these facts decide whether the product market 
justifies the increased pa}^ with the employer, and whether the labor market 
justifies its receipt and retention by the employees. Arbitrators do not make 
an award that would stop a weak employer's business, or would stop in a 
town an industry unfitted to compete at equal wages with other places. In 
such cases it is for the workers to decide individually whether to accept the 
low pay or to go elsewhere for better. Too often the award of arbitrators 
is reached by such a splitting of diff^erences as will secure agreement, with- 
out attempt to carry out fully the difficult task of finding and securing ac- 
ceptance of exactly what is right under all the market conditions prevailing. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 695 

composed of suitable men, can often remove a trouble about to 
break out, or by inducing the parties to meet can effect a 
settlement of a strike before its losses have become serious. 
The general duty of state boards is to keep informed of labor 
disputes, and to promptly offer their services toward settlement, 
or at least to be ready to serve when requested. In some of 
the states where strikes take place, action by these boards has 
been infrequent and unimportant, and in several of them the 
law creating a board has been a dead letter. The Massachu- 
setts board has been active and successful in mediation — in 
bringing about mutual agreement prior to or soon after the 
breaking out of a strike, before the parties have become stub- 
born and embittered. The same may be said of the board of 
New York, and to a less extent of the boards of Indiana and 
Illinois. In many cases, however, the board's mediation is 
ineffective, and in many cases it is wholly declined by the 
employer.^ In their other duty of arbitrating a dispute when 
voluntarily submitted to them by agreement of the two parties, 
state boards have accomplished very little. Cases are seldom 
submitted to them, though sometimes their mediation leads to 
arbitration by a special board agreed upon for the case. It is not 
uncommon for the two parties themselves, without mediation 
by a board, to choose as arbitrators several mutually acceptable 
men, and abide by their decision. Such a board of arbitrators 
has in Massachusetts the same powers as the regular state 
board to summon witnesses and compel them to produce ac- 

^The Massachusetts board, from 1894 to 1900, acted in 232 disputes, mostly 
small cases of interpretation of a general wage agreement. It formally- 
arbitrated in 54 cases, with but one refusal to abide by the decision, inves- 
tigated and publicly reported in 6 cases, and mediated successfully in 72, 
leaving 106 in which no particular results followed its intervention. Many 
requests for its intervention came from employers. The New York board, 
1894 to 1900, mediated successfully in 76 cases, unsuccessfully in 50, arbi- 
trated in 5, and publicly reported in 18. The Illinois board arbitrated in 
II cases, with three refusals by workmen to accept the decision and one 
refusal by an employer. 

Massachusetts and New York each established its conciliation board in 
1886. About two dozen other states have followed their example. Such 
boards now exist in most of the industrial countries. England's previously 
existing laws providing for arbitration had been little used. Massachusetts, 
in 1869, was first in the world to establish a bureau of labor statistics. She 
has been followed by about thirty states, and by many foreign countries. 



696 Getting a Living. 

counts of wages and prices. But unfortunately, a strike or 
lockout, when once well started, is in many or most cases 
fought out, until by yielding to the demands of one or the other 
side, or by compromise, each side conceding something, that 
settlement is effected which seems to be the best in reach.^ 

'Reasons for Asking or Declining Arbitration. Naturally the em- 
ployer, except in the few cases where his men are wholly in the wrong, 
would rather be forced with strike power to grant their demand, in which 
case the justice of his resistance would not be passed upon by a public body, 
than to have their demand officially sanctioned by a board of arbitration. 
When he expects success in his resistance he has little need for arbitration 
himself. Hence, most frequently the employer's main objection to submitting 
a case to arbitration is probably the desire to maintain secrecy in his busi- 
ness, which desire, though proper as regards his competitors, and partly 
excusable by reason of his long freedom in this respect, is questionable as 
regards disapproval of his contention by a board sworn not to reveal in- 
formation. Unless public opinion is influenced too much by sentiment for 
workingmen, and not enough by principles of sound business, there is ground 
for a belief that the autocratic bearing of many employers, in refusing to 
arbitrate or reason, hides conditions that would not bear investigation, and 
is intended to maintain those conditions by keeping down trade unionism. 
The employees it seems, in nearly all the Important cases that have broken 
out into strikes, ask for arbitration, without apparent regard to their chances 
of winning without it, and promise to obey the award. Perhaps the fact of 
the employer's not granting their demand without a strike is generally an 
indication that their winning without arbitration is doubtful, and perhaps 
their willingness to submit to arbitration is evidence of a basis in truth for 
what seems to be a widespread belief among other classes, that the general 
public are more ready to be just to workers than to employers. Further- 
more, though the employees' contention as a whole be weak, they are 
generally sure of being awarded in arbitration some concession to conciliate 
them. In many an industry paying all that marginal profits can spare, 
making the low wages of the employees public would awaken sympathy 
and favor. This fact is a sound objection to arbitration. 

Unionism, Where it is Strong, Objects to Arbitration, on the same 
questionable grounds that prevail with employers, though the proportion of 
unionists in this position is much smaller. Whenever the union, by ex- 
cluding apprentices and outside men, gets monopoly power, it naturally 
prefers to dictate, being sure of gaining any demands not grossly unreason- 
able, instead of having its high-handed or questionable methods made public 
by arbitration, and of risking an award unfavorable. Both in England and 
America there are many local unions with monopoly power in the building 
and glass trades, and also now in a number of other trades. In the hundreds 
of small sympathetic strikes by which building work in cities is ruled des- 
potically, arbitration by outsiders would not be acceptable to the workers. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 697 

Voluntary Public Effort to Conciliate the two parties in a 
strike or lockout has now become the rule when many workmen 
are involved. The local public, through its men of influence, 
usually acting with the state board where one exists, properly 
makes such effort to avoid injury to itself, in the bitterness 
aroused by a strike, in the suffering of workmen's families, and 
in the stopping of traffic and consequent loss in many lines of 
business. Mayors of cities, as officials responsible for peace 
and welfare, have become active in attempts to induce the 
parties to meet for conciliation. Prominent local clergymen, 
and others possessing the confidence of both sides, willingly 
serve on mediation or arbitration committees. In Massachu- 
setts by law it is the duty of a mayor to notify the state board 
of any important labor trouble in his locality. Confidence of 
both sides in Governor Crane of Massachusetts enabled him to 
effect an agreement in the large strike of teamsters and freight 
handlers at Boston in 1902. Such men of national reputation 
as Bishop Potter of New York, and Archbishop Ireland of St. 
Paul, are sometimes mentioned in suggestions for arbitration 
of strikes of national importance.^ In some instances political 

Moreover, any trade having wages very high, even though fully just, is 
not likely to gain by outside arbitration. Such assistance in wage bargaining 
is rightly felt by the public to be due to those needing an uplift, not to 
men securing large pay with their own economic power. A stonecutter told 
the Industrial Commission that in his trade arbitration had proved unsat- 
isfactory ; and in 1903 a demand of New York printers for increase of their 
$27 a week was rejected by arbitrators. 

The suspension by strikes, during the summer of 1903, of much of the 
building work in New York city, was mainly due to long refusal by a half 
dozen trades to follow the larger number of trades in accepting the em- 
ployers' proposal for arbitrating disputes, and for largely curtailing the 
power of walking delegates and limiting resort to sympathetic strikes. Nat- 
urally this opposition to arbitration was led by a walking delegate whose 
local union, that of house smiths, giving him almost absolute power, had 
raised its wages in five years from $2.50 to $4.50 per day, who is said to 
have called a thousand strikes, and whose union enthusiastically supported 
him when for his actions it was suspended by the international president, 
and voted to continue his salary of $48 a week in prison when he was sen- 
tenced to serve three years for extortion of bribes from employers. From 
this sentence he was released for a new trial, but his conviction is expected 
to result from the evidence in several other cases. 

^Public Intervention in the Coal Strike. Bishop Spalding of Peoria, 



698 Getting a Living, 

leaders have successfully used their great influence to settle a 
strike that hindered the party's chances in an election. This 
was done in the anthracite coal strike of 1900, occurring during 
the presidential campaign. 

and a federal judge, an army engineer, a mining engineer, a sociologist, and 
a local coal expert (all but the first being in the five occupations designated 
by the employers in their offer to accept arbitration), were selected by Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, adding also C. D. Wright to be recorder, as the commission 
that settled the anthracite coal strike of 1902. It took during five months, 
from over 500 witnesses, probably io,ooo pages of testimony. To agree to 
arbitration the employers were constrained by public opinion's unprecedented 
pressure, notably in resolutions by religious and civil bodies calling for 
arbitration, or even for government coal mining — a pressure rising from the 
unreasoning effort of the employers to suppress the unions by refusing to 
deal with them, and from the imminence of serious suffering in a fuel famine 
during winter. Owing to the culpability of the employing monopoly, and to 
the fact that by state law only the certificated miners on strike could do the 
work, the arbitration was not a surrender by employers and the people to 
the duress of the strikers' terrible boycotting and violence (page 214), and 
the employers were not justifiably resisting an effort by the union to shut 
out non-unionists. Early in the five months of the strike the New York 
Board of Trade, the business of that city being injured by lack of fuel and 
otherwise, requested President Roosevelt to intervene In conciliation, but as the 
federal law he was to act under (the law used in 1894) had been repealed 
he had no power to intervene officially further than to direct Labor Com- 
missioner Wright to investigate and report, under some little used provisions 
of the labor department and inter-state commerce laws. As the strike con- 
tinued after Mr. Wright's report, without indication of the least compro- 
mise by the employers, and with such bitterness that Pennsylvania's troops 
called out numbered at last 10,000, President Roosevelt, taking the crisis to 
be one requiring action without the sanction of precedent, applied unofficially 
his influence as the head of the nation, and as representing aroused public 
opinion, and, by calling two meetings of employers and strike officials at the 
White House, induced the employers, after one refusal (and after J. P. Mor- 
gan as controlling owner had counseled them with some authority), to accept 
arbitration as the strikers had desired from the beginning. The strikers 
returned to work at once, in October, the commission's award, to affect all 
work after November i, being rendered in March. To a large extent the 
demands of the strikers were allowed. 

A few weeks after President Roosevelt's action. President Loubet of France 
intervened similarly in a strike of coal miners in his country, but there many 
of the miners repudiated the award. Nine years before in England Mr. 
Gladstone as Premier, together with the labor department, ended by media- 
tion, at the beginning of winter, a coal mining strike that threatened grave 
suffering among the people and grave injury to industry. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 699 

The Civic Federation. The most far-reaching plan ever 
carried out voluntarily by private citizens for settling labor 
disputes is that of the National Civic Federation, a philanthropic 
and public welfare society, in whose object of removing evils 
and promoting progress labor peace has properly an important 
place. Its committee of twelve on conciliation, after an active 
and successful existence of a year as a permanent body offering 
friendly mediation in important strikes anywhere in the coun- 
try, was enlarged, by a notable conciliation convention at New 
York in December, 1901, to a membership of thirty-six, divided 
equally among labor leaders, prominent employers, and repre- 
sentatives of the public. The latter include Ex-President 
Cleveland, Bishop Potter, and President Eliot of Harvard 
University. The "employers include Senator Hanna, and Presi- 
dent Ripley of the Santa Ee railroad. The labor leaders are 
President Gompers of the American Eederation, and the na- 
tional presidents of some of the principal unions. At this 
convention, and at two others held within the previous twelve 
months, men of national prominence, representing the three 
parties to every labor dispute, expressed belief in the need and 
practicability of doing away with most of the present indus- 
trial discord. In a sub-committee of the thirty-six, offering 
to assist at friendly mediation in each important dispute as it 
occurs, or at selecting men for its arbitration, the federation 
has apparently been becoming, with both workmen and em- 
ployers, an established institution. In January, 1902, it was 
instrumental in averting a large strike of garment workers, and 
in March following its secretary, Ralph M. Easley, assisted in 
the negotiations that led to a settlement through Governor 
Crane of the teamsters' strike at Boston.^ 

^An Active and Useful Body. For spreading the knowledge necessary 
to lasting industrial peace and progress it holds conventions, has specialists 
investigate such subjects as trade union restriction of output, and publishes 
reports and a monthly journal, its main effort being to promote the formation 
of trade agreements. Its mediation (over a hundred cases so far, in only 
one of which it has been asked to arbitrate) is chiefly private, consisting in 
bringing about a meeting of the two parties. For this it is well fitted, reach- 
ing corporations through its many influential supporters. In the steel and 
coal strikes, it checked the feeling toward sympathetic strikes by enlisting 
the aid of labor leaders and holding conferences in trade centers. It has 
just formed local branches in several large cities, and will do so in others. 



700 Getting a Living, 

The Joint Board of Conciliation and Arbitration for a 

single trade, in a city or district, composed of several employers 
and of an equal number of workmen, was introduced into Eng- 
land in 1859 (adapted from French experience), by A. J. 
Mundella, a hosiery manufacturer of Nottingham, and later 
was introduced in a somewhat different form by Rupert Kettle, 
a lawyer, into the iron trades of Wolverhampton, provision 
being made by the latter for a referee, whose decision, by 
previous agreement, was binding (in honor at least, if no 
forfeit money was put up) in case the board failed to agree. 
This plan of collectively agreeing in advance on wages, and 
more generally of preventing or settling disputes by interpret- 
ing the wage agreement, has worked very successfully in the 
two cities named, preserving unbroken peace for many years 
at a time, and removing in Nottingham discord that had be- 
come almost unbearable. Joint boards of this kind, established 
on a large scale about the year 1870 in the North of England 
iron trades, and in the Durham coal districts, have preserved 
harmony, rarely broken, down to the present time, and have 
spread in some form to most of the well unionized industries 
and districts of Great Britain. In America success similarly 
encouraging has been attained for some years in the shoe 
industry, in the masonry trades at some cities, in the several 
large industries described further on under collective bargain- 
ing, and recently in hundreds of written agreements with the 
local unions of many trades.^ A joint committee, composed 
partly of employees and partly of men in the firm, is sometimes 
forrfied within a single factory, especially to consider and adjust 
small disputes. These boards are numerous and successful in 

In each of about twenty British cities there is a local mediation board, 
usually in connection with the local board of trade. 

^A complete account of conciliation and arbitration in different lands and 
trades, each of thirty American trades being treated separately, is given by the 
Industrial Commission, 1901, in Vol. XVII. , and much matter concerning the 
subject appears in the other volumes. The New York board's report for 1901 
contains all the American arbitration laws, and many from foreign lands, 
especially those of Australasia. U. S, Labor Bulletin Nos. 8 and 28 give good 
brief accounts of joint committees in England and America, and of the other 
method (followed in the British cotton and the American bar iron and coal 
trades) in which one agent chosen by the employers, and one by the union, 
go together to setde small disputes by interpreting the signed agreement. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 701 

France, and have been notably successful in a few cases in 
America, among them being the New York cigar factory of 
Straiton & Storm, in which cordial relations have been main- 
tained for many years at a time. 

Compulsory Arbitration, based on a law not inviting but 
requiring the disputants to submit their case to a state board, 
and also to abide by its decision, whatever that may be, was 
recommended by a few American writers at the time of the 
many violent strikes between 1889 and 1895, and by Mr. Lloyd 
and a few others during the two years following 1899; and 
since the coal strike of 1902 compulsory arbitration in some 
form has been recommended by several state governors, by one 
or two influential economists, and by dozens of lesser writers.^ 

^Articles Favoring Compulsory Arbitration: Rev. Dr. Lyman Ab- 
bott and Rabbi Schindler, Arena, 1892-3 ; Rev. Dr. Wayland, Social Science 
Journal, meeting of 1893 I John Handiboe and J. A. Hobson, N. A. Revieiv, 

1902. The compulsory arbitration system of New Zealand is strongly 
indorsed by H. D. Lloyd, in his two books "A Country Without Strikes" and 
"Newest England," written after his visit to Australasia in 1899, and by him 
and H. H. Lusk of New Zealand in different magazines of 1901-2. A com- 
plete account of all the Australasian arbitration laws is given, and compul- 
sion is favored, by H. W. Macrosty in Political Science Quarterly, March, 

1903, In this journal of the previous December Prof. J. B. Clark recom- 
mends arbitration with some compulsory features. 

Articles opposing compulsory arbitration: C. D. Wright, Forum, 1893; 
Chester Allen, Arena, 1893 ; W. Macarthur, Forum, 1901 ; Samuel Gompers, 
pamphlets of the American Federation of Labor. Articles on both sides of 
the question are printed in the book "Labor and Capital," Putnam, 1902, 
and opinions on both sides are quoted by the Industrial Commission, 
Vol. XVII. 

New Zealand's Compulsory Arbitration Law seems quite successful 
when not studied too deeply, having been widened repeatedly until it now 
applies to any manual or clerical work for hire. During its first six years 
106 cases came before the district boards of conciliation (composed equally 
of employers and workmen serving three years), which have no power to 
enforce awards. Their finding was accepted in only 31 of these cases, the 
remaining 75 being carried up to the one arbitration court for the whole 
country, composed of one member appointed by the governor for three years 
from nominees of employers, and of one appointed from nominees of work- 
men, with a presiding judge from the supreme court. Before this arbitration 
court 57 cases were brought directly, to avoid delay in the conciliation 
boards. Of the 163 cases tried by the court only 12 came up again for en- 
forcement, in 6 of which the application was denied, but in the other 6, 
violation of the award being clearly proved, the court applied its penalties. 



702 Getting a Living. 

Compulsory arbitration laws, the first attempts of the kind since 
the fixing of wages by magistrates fell into disuse in the eight- 
eenth century, were enacted ten years ago in Australasia, the 

which may consist only of money payments, not to exceed £500 against an 
employer when acting alone, a labor union, or an employers' union. All of a 
union's property may be taken, including that held by trustees. Members 
of a labor or employers' union are also individually liable to the amount of 
<£io. Up to 1901 all applications but one for enforcement were against 
employers, and it is believed other applications have not been made for fear 
of discharge of the informing workman. Hence, by amendment enforcement 
will probably be committed to the factory inspector. The largest penalty 
yet imposed was £25 ; in no case has an award been materially defied — never 
by workmen to the extent of penalty, though they have been displeased at 
a few awards, and have then purposely worked slowly. The compulsion to 
submit a dispute to the board or to the court is usually applied by labor 
unions and by employers' unions, but in an unorganized trade seven work- 
men (or employers) may register as a union, and may compel a single em- 
ployer, who singly may compel any of his employees so organized. As the 
court's award for the seven is necessarily applied to the men of competing 
employers, no trade of a community (or of the whole country when all 
sections compete) can avoid coming under the compulsion when seven 
workers desire it. In this way an employer refusing to hire organized men 
may be reached. The award does not compel employer or employee to con- 
tinue work ; the compulsion is that if they do continue in the business they 
must obey the award of the court — to be in force not exceeding two years 
(and afterwards since 1901 until a new award is made). Quitting by work- 
men one at a time, without preconcerted plan to resist an award, is always 
permissible. A trade in which employers and workmen mutually agree not 
to come under the law, or agree to withdraw from it or not to use it, may 
strike and lock out, but no others. Perhaps there might be a question in 
some cases as to whether men were striking, or were idle in hesitation 
whether to leave the business or not. In trades not under the law there have 
been seven strikes since it went into effect, involving in all not over 300 
workers. One strike brought a loss of £2,000 on the employer. Many work- 
men have not 3'et put themselves under the law by registering as unions; 
and even in trades placed under the law the penalties against striking and 
locking out apply only where the dispute has been referred to the board or 
court. Both sides may agree not to refer it. Advantage of the law was 
taken gradually, no cases arising during its first year ; but since the amend- 
ment of 1 901 many additional trades have organized on both sides, and the 
arbitration court has been overburdened with cases, despite its power not to 
consider those which are trivial. Many employers, but far from all, are 
pleased with the system, largely because it holds all competitors to the same 
wages and hours, and settles these so that risk Is removed from calculations. 
The labor laws of Australia are described in detail in U. S. Labor Bulletin 



Conciliation^ Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 703 

world's experiment station in government. The first and most 
noted of these laws is that of New Zealand, enacted in 1894. 
Victoria enacted in 1896 a law that placed under compulsory 

Nos. 33 and 40. The latter contains a report from a New South Wales 
judge sent to New Zealand to study the effects of its arbitration laws. The 
figures above are taken mainly from an article by H, D. Lloyd, summarized 
in Public Opinion, Aug. 29, 1901. 

Compulsory Arbitration in New South Wales. Under the law of this 
colony there are no conciliation boards. These have proved almost a failure 
in New Zealand, not having such members as the supreme court judge who 
presides over the arbitration court. A majority of a trade in a locality, not 
simply seven workmen, are necessary to form a union and come under the 
New South Wales law. In New Zealand labor disputes have greatly in- 
creased, because it is now easy to have them settled, and because agitators 
have induced trades to take advantage of the law. It is for these reasons 
that the arbitration court is overburdened with business. The effects of the 
New Zealand law have gone far beyond the intentions, since "it is used as a 
means of fixing the wages and general conditions of labor in many industries, 
and, without doubt, will eventually be so used in all." The New South 
Wales act is boldest and most original in imposing a fine of not over<£i,ooo, 
or not over two months' imprisonment, on any one who, before a reasonable 
time has elapsed for referring a dispute to the arbitration court, or during 
pendency of proceedings, strikes or locks out, suspends operations or leaves 
employment without good reason, or instigates or aids such acts. By this 
provision no person at all may strike or lock out before an award, whether 
or not he belongs to a union of workmen or of employers; nor may he do so 
after an award, it w^ould seem, under its compulsory force. Unlike New 
Zealand, where no official has charge of the workings of the act. New South 
Wales has a registrar, who may refer to the court any cases in trades in 
which only one side, or neither side, has formed an Industrial union. This 
provision will prevent evasion of the act by any means except influencing 
the registrar, or withholding knowledge from him. The penalty for dis- 
regarding an award or order is not to exceed £500 for a union of either 
employers or employees, or for a person bound who is not a member of a 
union, or £5 for a union's individual member. The court specifies to whom 
the penalty is to be paid. The word fine is not used in this and the above 
paragraphs, because in most cases it seems that the penalty goes to the party 
damaged by the disobedience. This court, as the New Zealand court has 
done in many cases and down to very small matters, has power to fix a 
minimum wage and the number of apprentices, and to make many a regula- 
tion a common rule for all employers affected within a certain area, that 
competitors may be on an equal footing; also to require that unionists, other 
things being equal, must be employed In preference to others, though unions 
must admit all competent men, and keep fees and dues reasonable. An 
employer discharging a man because he belongs to a union, or is entitled to 



704 Getting a Living. 

control of separate boards each of six sweated industries, and 
in 1900 empowered the governor to extend the act to any trade 
that is subject to the factory laws. It has now been applied to 
thirty-eight trades in all. New South Wales enacted in 1901 a 
law patterned after that of New Zealand, but in some respects 
going further. The New Zealand act was copied in 1900 by 
Western Australia, and the Victoria act in 1900 by South 
Australia, which had had since 1894 a compulsory law that had 
never been effective. 

Compulsory Features in American Arbitration Laws. The 
Texas law of 1895 provides that where the two parties in a 
dispute choose a board of five arbitrators, have them licensed 
by the county judge, and sign in advance a formal agreement, 

the benefit of the court's order, is liable to a penalty of not over £20, and the 
burden is on the employer to prove that the discharge was for other reason. 
For revealing a trade secret of any witness or party, a member of the court 
is liable to a penalty of £500. Agreements between a trade union and an 
employer, or between unions on either side, may be enforced the same as an 
award of the court. A union's fines on its own members, and its dues, the 
court may order to be paid. From the court's decision there is no appeal. 
"It has a wider jurisdiction and greater powers than perhaps any other 
court in the British dominions." (See U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 40; and an 
article by an Australian In Tke Independent, July 31, 1902.) By a report in 
American Federationist, June, 1903, of the Australian trade union congress, 
the New South Wales act Is proving objectionable to unionists, there being 
much litigation and unfriendly administration. 

Under Victoria's Law the employer's fine for the first violation Is £10, 
for the third £100, and for the fourth he loses his business license. Many 
of the later wage boards were applied for by employers, to fix uniform con- 
ditions for competitors, and many employers are pleased with the law; but 
some suspended for months to defy It, and some employees are dissatisfied. 
(Macrosty. See page 340.) By a long list of minute details as to minimum 
rates, piece work, "tea money," etc., this law takes care of people as if they 
were all children. {Labor Bulletin No. 38.) No doubt it will be remem- 
bered as a curiosity of legislation. 

Only In Australasia, it seems, has compulsory arbitration been tried. Yet 
exception might be made of Austria, where industry has never known 
liberty. There it is unlawful to hire a man not having a government pass 
book, giving detailed Information regarding him. State and guild arbitra- 
tion boards, together with industrial and civil courts, make and compulsorily 
enforce decisions in disputes over the making and continuance of labor con- 
tracts as well as in those over breaking them. {Labor Bulletin No, 28.) 
There is some of the same compulsion under the German guild system. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 705 

the award "may be specifically enforced in equity, so far as the 
powers of a court of equity permit." By the Indiana law of 
1899, parties agreeing in writing to submit a labor dispute to 
arbitration must obey the award or be subject, for contempt of 
court, to imposition of punishment by the circuit judge, who is 
to be the presiding member of the arbitration board ; but pun- 
ishment may not extend to imprisonment except in case of will- 
ful and contumacious disobedience. Pennsylvania's law of 
1895 differs from those of all the other states in that arbitration 
may be forced upon one party by application of the other party, 
the decision of the board being ''final and conclusive in all 
matters brought before it for judgment." This would be com- 
pulsory arbitration, and doubtless would not stand the test of 
the Constitution, since the award might require an employer by 
law to pay certain wages against his w^ll or leave the business, 
which requirement could hardly be justified under the state's 
police power to guard the public welfare. The Missouri law 
of 1901 imposes a fine of $50 to $100, or not over six months' 
imprisonment, or both, on any one who violates the decision of 
the arbitration board ; and arbitration may be forced by one 
party on the other, though the latter, within five days after the 
decision, may choose not to be bound by it. The Kansas law 
of 1899, declared unconstitutional, empowered a court of visita- 
tion, in case of a railway strike, to arbitrate the case, whether 
arbitration was desired, either by the company or its men, or 
by neither. To enforce its decree the court was empowered to 
put the railroad in charge of a receiver.^ As under British acts 
of 1824 and 1872, so under the Texas, Indiana, and Missouri 
acts, and under the federal acts for railroads, enforcement of 
award, though it would perhaps be constitutional, is avoided 
by not agreeing to arbitration. The Pennsylvania act might be 
called a dead letter. The element of compulsion in all these 
American and British arbitration acts has had practically no 
effect. 

Union Workmen are Opposed to Compulsory Arbitration 

in the United States, nearly as much so as employers are. It 
is regarded with general disfavor by British unionists also, 
except by those groping in the socialistic maze, who there, as 

^ Labor Bulletin No. 26. Indus. Com. XVII. 
45 



7o6 Getting a Living. 

in America, are a disturbing element in trade union conven- 
tions. In 1902 the British Trade Union Congress voted down 
by a decisive majority a compulsory arbitration resolution, 
though the vote in its favor was large. Representative Amer- 
ican unionists are emphatic in their objection to giving up 
their right to strike. Only with it can workers pass collectively 
at any time on the desirableness of their conditions of labor, 
and choose collectively whether to continue under them. In 
this they are clinging to the principle on which courts refuse 
to enforce specifically a contract to labor, because compulsory 
labor is of the nature of slavery, and against public policy — is 
usually undesired by the employer also. Workmen fear that 
with shrewd legal counsel, or with the influence of his wealth, 
the employer w^ould get the better of them in arbitration, and 
would hold them on terms unsatisfactory to them. The em- 
ployer fears that workmen would hold him in the same way, 
through the effort of politicians and of local business men to 
please them. 

Necessity of the Right to Strike. It seems reasonable and 
necessary that under one's own individual risk of consequences 
an employer or workman should object to being legally bound 
in advance with penalties to accept, or leave business, continuing 
conditions fixed by several men as an arbitration board. Com- 
pulsory arbitration is entirely different from the compulsion by 
an ordinary court of law.^ A law court enforces, by exacting in 
money or goods, of those having property, the performance of 
past contracts ; it has nothing to do with a contract yet to be en- 
tered into. But it is the latter that is disputed about in a strike 
or lockout ; one party refuses to accept the other's offer. That 
degree of conflict must always remain, so long as a person is 
allowed to choose whether to contract or not — to buy or sell — 
so long in fact as contracting can be done at all. Peace need 

^It Is simply in settling disputes over money alleged to be due in wages 
for work already done by an individual workman that compulsory power is 
exercised by the arbitration courts, or conseils de prud'hommes, existing in 
France for a century, and lately established in Switzerland. They consist of 
men chosen from both the employers and the workmen in a local trade, and, 
besides deciding minor matters of wages due, inspect factories and act as 
boards of conciliation. Their plan was partly followed by Mr. Mundella 
in introducing joint boards into England. {U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 25.) 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 707 

not be broken if the state performs its duty of preserving order. 
That is enough for it — often more than it does. The parties 
themselves will attend to the contracting. It is the violence to- 
ward non-unionists, not the refusal of the strikers to work, that 
is a public injury, as is an ordinary fight in the streets. In con- 
tending for compulsion, the street fight is as unhappy an illus- 
tration as is the law court. The street fight is stopped by the 
police, but no inquiry is made as to whether one of the fighters 
ought to do what the other wants done. Without violence in 
a strike, work will be resumed, either by the strikers or by 
non-unionists, before the loss is serious, unless both parties, 
and including the non-unionists, consider the loss a lesser evil 
than submission on the terms proposed.^ What loss and suf- 
fering is then incurred society must pay for the inestimable 
advantage of having men free to choose. When people become 
capable of leaving the tribal village and living under modern 
freedom of exchange, their own self-interest holds them best 
to the wise course. In fixing conditions the state does enough 
in its labor laws. By these, as some states have done, the 
freedom to make or break contracts it can reasonably restrict 
by prohibiting with criminal penalty an engineer from aban- 
doning a train before reaching his destination, or a miner and 

^Strikes Drove Australia to Compulsion. A series of disastrous strikes, 
between 1889 and 1894, is given as the reason for enacting compulsory arbi- 
tration in Australia. The maritime strike spread until nearly all business on 
the continent was paralyzed. Later the Broken Hill gold miners' strike 
developed intense bitterness ; a small army had to be sent from Sydney 
1,300 miles to save the mining plant from destruction, and some of the agi- 
tators were imprisoned for long terms. In the sheep shearers' strike in 
Queensland there was great incendiarism and violence. The colliery strikes 
brought Newcastle to the verge of ruin. {The Independent, July 31, 1902.) 
But it will prove easier and better for the state simply to keep order than to 
manage private industries through an arbitration court. Workmen capable 
of such fearful striking ought to learn how to bargain without being im- 
posed upon — assisted only with such factory laws as those of England and 
Massachusetts. Not a dollar above what reasonable union bargaining would 
secure will ever be gained for workmen in direct wages by all possible power 
of the state, that is not taken somewhere out of industry by injuring it, and 
with which more dollars are not thus taken also, to the net loss of all con- 
cerned, especially of the working class, besides the lessening of capability in 
character by taking away the bargaining and self-direction on which it 
mainly exists. 



7o8 Getting a Living. 

his employer from endangering men's safety by carrying out 
a contract to work over eight hours a day (p. 436).^ 

^Where Striking is Criminal. In Great Britain, whose laws are perhaps 
the most liberal in the world as to the right and motives of striking, willful 
quitting of work, singly or in combination, where the quitting breaks a time 
contract and is likely to expose life or property to serious injury, is punishable 
by £20 fine or three months' imprisonment. In a few other cases also it is 
criminal to leave work when one is under contract to continue. For quitting 
without giving notice, 317 striking coal miners at Doncaster were fined in 
1902 $30 each — that is, in newspaper reports the penalty was called a 
fine, but in this case it was doubtless an award of damages in a civil suit. 
A penalty of £2 imposed in 1903 on each of 385 Glamorganshire colliers 
was called a fine, but it was awarded as damages to an employer who 
sued men under contract for absence from work because of presence of 
non-unionists. But previous to 1867 ^^ Great Britain, in all hiring of 
labor, breaking of the contract by the employee was criminal, and punish- 
able with short imprisonment, though by reason of not making time con- 
tracts, and of non-enforcement, the law seemed, in the later years at least^ 
to involve but little hardship. The employer, for breach on his side, was 
liable only to suit for damages — the case with both sides alike after 1867. 

In New South Wales either party may be imprisoned 14 days if he has no 
property. Imprisonment for the laborer is still the rule in Austria, Russia, 
and some other Continental countries. By statute in New York it is criminal 
to willfully quit work, when under contract to continue, if the quitting ex- 
poses life or property to serious injury. In some states in the South it is 
criminal to break a contract for farming on the shares, since supplies are 
furnished the cropper in advance, and his leaving may involve the getting 
of goods under false pretenses — criminal everywhere. In all other American 
cases, since work against one's will approaches slavery and is against public 
policy, the employee, for breach of contract in refusing to work, is subject 
only to suit for damages — usually no remedy at all in his lack of property 
to attach ; though on other grounds the New York criminal statute mentioned 
is largely in eifect in the common law of other states, especially in such a 
case as that of a surgeon leaving his knife in a patient's body and demanding 
more pay. 

For a Unionized Fire Department (there are some such now) to refuse 
to fight fire on the premises of an employer of scabs, would doubtless be^ 
by common law, a criminal offense of some kind. The hiring contract^ 
without mention of time, would imply continuance of service through such 
an emergency. An organizer's reported threat in Texas that unionized 
firemen would act thus was lately discountenanced in a published letter by 
President Gompers. In the British law referred to, making some striking 
criminal, employees of gas and water works are mentioned specifically. 
On these two services the public is more closely dependent than on railway 
and street car service. There are unions of gas works employees In 
America, but the question of their right to strike seems not to have risen. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 709 

Peace is Not Always the Great Desideratum. It was to 

bring a sword into the world that the Prince of Peace said he 
had come — to join with a man's enemies even those of his own 

Sailors Are Compelled to continue, under American and British law, 
the labor contracted for, to the extent that, for desertion at a domestic port, 
they are imprisoned and delivered to the ship on her departure; and for 
then refusing to work they are tried by a federal court at the next port and 
imprisoned. But all these laws are doubtless the best to be made for the 
conditions, as is the case with forcing prisoners to labor, and as may have 
been the case with what little forcing of men to work there was done under 
the British Statute of Laborers six centuries ago. These laws are good in 
results for all, not bad, as was imprisonment for debt eighty years ago; 
as Russia's present law seems to be, imprisoning the leaders in any strike; 
as was Alabama's unconstitutional law of 1901 for forcing debtors to work 
under the slavery of peonage; and as would have been the proposal of 
Southern manufacturers in 1899 to invite capital and stop strikes by requiring 
term contracts and making breach of them a felony. Under the dangers of 
navigation the laws that hold sailors to military obedience give also rigid 
protection in their favor. If unionism's opposition to compulsion secured 
enactment into law of Justice Harlan's dissenting contention in 1897 that 
the thirteenth amendment prohibits as involuntary servitude the always 
practiced and universal compulsion of sailors, men of the character now 
found on vessels would not be hired, and sea transportation would be raised 
in price and reduced in extent to balance the employer's increase of risk. 
Protection by law from hardship in enforcing contracts results in good to 
all when carried far enough, but when carried further it brings all an injury, 
especially the unshrewd workers favored (page 546). Civilization requires 
contracts of the right degree of effectiveness. In nearly all kinds of labor 
no time contract is needed, and for any or no reason the worker may quit 
without liability. The strong objection of unionists to compulsion and to 
contempt punishment leads them to avoid entering such arbitration as that 
of Indiana. For the compulsion, as well as for the danger, men can also 
avoid enlisting as soldiers or sailors. (For the decision in the Arago case, 
in which the United States Supreme Court, with dissent by Justice Harlan 
alone, upheld the laws subjecting sailors to compulsion, see Labor Bulletin 
No. II, or 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 326.) Prof. Ely, in his excellent new book, 
^'Industrial Societ}'," as in his previous works, seems to be unduly drawn 
toward the socialistic demand for new laws to secure and increase the 
liberty of the weak by protecting them in contracting with the strong. 
Especially is this the case with his view of the need for laws to prevent 
the twentieth man from forcing nineteen competitors to observe hours 
objectionable to them (pages 442, 531). In laws as to factory hours, 
company stores, exemption in debt, etc., most of the states seem disposed to 
go as far as will not make conditions worse by enfeebling the workers as 
childi-en and needlessly reducing employment; while by the common law 



7IO Getting a Living. 

household. Peace is an evil when it stands in the way of 
attaining justice and righteousness. On these alone does 
wholesome peace rest. And struggling to maintain these, 
against wrong both in others and in one's self, is the only thing 
that makes manhood. To a large extent it has been by union- 
izing and striking that wage earners have developed the inde- 
pendence and working efficiency necessary for performing 
their part in the complex industry of modern times (page i86). 
British counties and American states that have the best devel- 
oped unionism are the farthest advanced, though of course 
some advancement of industry came first and made a need for 
unionism. Where, as in India, there is no unionism, nor readi- 

for many years the state has protected the weak by making void those 
contracts clearly unjust or against public policy, such as a contract lacking 
on one side in consideration, or such as the recently discovered and set 
aside contracts by which Negroes in several states of the South were 
partially enslaved through their agreement in writing to submit to force 
in guarding, capture, etc., and to charges by which the employer might 
prolong the service indefinitely. (Ely, 407. j 

Strikes of Railway Men, of sufficient extent to seriously interrupt the 
traffic upon which even the life of people in cities depends, are unlawful 
under the inter-state commerce act of 1887 and the anti-trust act of 1890 
(page 548) ; and by the precedent set by courts in 1894, the degree of com- 
bination and boycotting necessary to make such strikes effective will doubtless 
not again be permitted or attempted. Many strikes of railway men have 
occurred since then, but among shop men and freight handlers — not among 
train crews except in a few unimportant cases, and not materially obstructing 
traffic. A combination of railroad officials that interrupted traffic would be 
likewise under the ban. "It follows therefore that a [railroad] strike or 
boycott, if it was ever effective, can be so no longer." (Court decision quoted 
in Labor Bulletin No. 26, p. 26.) Though this judge gave the extreme inter- 
pretation of the law, his view seems destined to prevail. It is well that the 
two statutes mentioned, designed to restrain employers, answered also for 
employees. By this elastic and unnoticeable compulsion, together with sup- 
pression of never lawful violence and boycotting, both parties are constrained 
to agree without that impairment of liberty involved in Australian arbitra- 
tion or Hungarian and Swedish anti-strike laws, and without that impair- 
ment involved in placing by law a million railway men under hard and 
fast rules of obedience. Unionism denounces the application to it of the 
two federal statutes, and now seeks exemption in the state anti-trust laws 
(under the Texas anti-trust law a damage suit is now pending" against 
union officials for a boycott), but such exemption would generally be un- 
constitutional, and would be neutralized by other laws and by nature's 
penalties for wrong doing. 



Conciliation^ Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining, yii 

ness to individually demand and go after the most, the abject 
submission of workmen to employer is equalled by the absence 
of efficiency in the one and of enterprise in the other.^ And 
unionism is nothing without striking, except so far as it follows, 
as in New Zealand, the worse action of agitating for favors. 
The right to strike, or leave, to maintain its vitality, must be 
continually exercised, not necessarily in actual stoppage of 
work, but at least in readiness to stop if the terms justly to be 
afforded by trade conditions should be withheld. 

Compulsory Arbitration is Practicable, New Zealand has 
proved. It was a mistake to argue that men would have to be 
driven to work as convicts by soldiers, and that employers 
would close down and take their capital to other lands. The 
arbitration court could avoid attempting to compel men to 
depart far from the course they desired to follow. But this 
does not prove the system to be wise. In New Zealand, 
with only 800,000 people, mainly agricultural, the court has 
been able to understand her industries, small and simple and 
safely shielded from foreign competition by distance or by 
tariffs, and has been able to make fairly just awards, most of 
which have favored the workmen. Coming in a time of 
prosperous business the world over, employers have not seri- 
ously objected to bearing the restrictions. To a large extent 
the court has been essentially managing the country's indus- 
tries and taking care of its workmen — requiring employment 
first of all the union men idle, fixing wages for an entire trade 
at a time, deciding whether the market rate of wages is enough, 
permitting to work for less old men an employer has the right 
not to hire, and exercising in general a fatherly oversight. The 
detailed inquiries made according to law of a man's inability to 
earn the rate set are amusing, as is Mr. Lloyd's account of the 
government's sowing a field for a widow. While able and 

^The improvement brought about to some extent in management and 
machinery by the Victorian wage boards' raising of wages will prove de- 
lusive. The worker is depending on the government to bargain for and take 
care of him ; the employer is depending on it to help him against competitors, 
and the employers as a class know that if they do not improve the law will 
be modified for them. Both sides are being coddled and enfeebled, and 
turned away from that vital process of self-reliantly getting jobs and custo- 
mers by going after them and giving best values. 



712 Getting a Living. 

honest men do the governing, such a system for a while works 
admirably. It was so under Joseph in Egypt, and under 
Haroun al Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad. The New Zealand 
government now insures the people, provides pensions for the 
aged, gives legal advice, acts as guardian and trustee, and as a 
friend to those in distress, borrows and lends money, especially 
to those not desirable as borrowers with private lenders, mar- 
kets products in London, does the bargaining in wage contracts 
for practically the whole country, provides work for the unem- 
ployed, sets them up as farmers on vacant land, keeps breeding 
stock for the public, and does various other things for the peo- 
ple better than they could do them for themselves. It might go 
further with similar success, and have capable officials ready to 
serve a citizen by planning for him a house or barn, and by 
advising him in the purchase of a horse or a suit of clothes. 

But What Will Be the Result within twenty-five years? 
Whatever may be said by the socialist as to the people's serving 
themselves through their committee the government, it seems 
safe to predict that they will soon become unable to do so indi- 
vidually, especially after the political struggle of starting the 
new system has been ended ; and it will then be strange if those 
in the government, and the few others that are capable, do not 
begin to exploit the helpless people for personal gain. The 
ugly sweating the workers at once fell under when in 1902 a 
short time elapsed between the Victorian law's expiration and 
its reenactment, indicates the inevitable effect of increased help- 
lessness. Material comfort furnished by government can never 
balance the loss of individual independence. This loss soon 
checks production and progress, and with increasing taxation 
may take the material comfort and bring national poverty. 
Unnecessary regulation of industry, in an attempt (always 
vain) to get out of it for workers more than the market value 
of their services, soon lessens employment, and the product that 
can be taxed ; while giving men much help in their bargaining 
soon makes them need help in their working, and unable to 
change it as required by the progress of the times. As product 
that all live upon decreases, capability of doing weakens, by 
which alone product can be regained. Such a process carried 
a little way might not be recovered from in two generations. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 713, 

By no means does absence of human restriction make true Mr. 
Lloyd's happy phrase ''Government & Co. Unlimited." The 
laws of men, when wise, are simply applications of the laws of 
nature. By no possible scheme of government can the latter be 
evaded. One of the clearest of them is that the only way a 
person has of learning and being is by individually doing. The 
mother does not tie the child's shoes because she can tie them 
better. Society cannot hire half the people to lead the other 
half around, and then send to Mars for a third set to keep the 
leaders from exploiting the led.^ 

^Effects Proving the Unsoundness of Compulsory Arbitration. The 
workingmen of Australasia, a splendid class of people but following mis- 
taken ideas, had the misfortune to gain too much power in politics, giving 
them control of the governments, with no opposition party strong enough to 
hold them in paths of safety. Hence, after finding that by strikers, no more 
than by robbers, can industry be forced to stand and deliver beyond return 
in market value and live (or bear within that value much straining of set- 
tled liberties), they undertook to get more than the market value of their 
labor by government action. The latter method has long been a proved 
success where there is a class from whom the excess value can be taken as a 
tax. From the report of the judge sent from New South Wales to New 
Zealand to investigate, the following is abridged. "The effect of the arbitra- 
tion act has been to make the public pay generally more for products of an 
industry regulated by the court, when the tariff or other conditions prevent 
foreign competition. In the boot trade awards made seem not to be justified, 
and outside producers leap the tariff fence. The coal mine owners advanced 
price at once when wages were raised; so did the flour millers. Building 
now costs more; contractors at first opposed but little the advances in wages, 
feeling able to pass on the extra cost by raising prices; but now they feel 
that the tendency is to lessen the amount of building to be done, and are 
opposing more effectively the demands of their men. Rent is becoming 
dearer." The class who cannot get back the higher prices they pay are the 
farmers, the vast majority of the people, whose home prices on products are 
fixed by prices in Europe on their exports. As European prices have hap- 
pened to be unusually high during the last few years, the effect of the arbi- 
tration act has not been felt by the farmers sufficiently to turn them strongly 
against it. Its day of reckoning is yet to come. The success of the act 
seems clearly to be traceable to the wisdom of the court, and to an increasing 
wave of prosperity, "largely due to the favorable market for exports in no 
way affected directly by the act, such as wool, frozen mutton, and kauri gum. 
When the lean years come, and wages must be lowered instead of being 
raised, it remains to be seen whether the principle is workable or not — 
whether men will loyally abide by the award, or will turn out only the work 
theythink the wage justifies." {Labor Bulletin No. 40, p. 558.) Lately, in 



^714 Getting a Living. 

In America Would Not the Compulsion be Nominal? Not 

only would New Zealand's system of arbitration (truly called a 
cure-all or a dilettante remedy) be radically unconstitutional in 
the United States, impairing freedom of contract for no ade- 
quate reason of police power, but no court here would be likely 
to understand, well enough to make workable awards, many of 
our great and complicated industries. Nor would our work- 
men, accustomed to deciding for themselves, be disposed to take 
quietly what was given them if in their opinion it was but 
slightly short of their rights. The penalty, necessarily a light 
fine, as in New Zealand, to avoid sweeping away the law by 
revulsion of public feeling, would not be feared by aggrieved 
workmen, and would break down into non-enforcement if many 
men disobeyed an award. A fine against an employer, to the 
limit of the New Zealand law's $2,500, perhaps necessarily kept 
low to give any chance of collection from a labor union, would 
be a trifle to a concern employing thousands ; and the employing 
class, in the willingness of most of them to do what is scientifi- 
cally right, would find a way, perhaps without much closing of 
factories, to get rid of a law applied a few times so as to require 
them to do more — without the general fright among employ- 
ers, and suspension of business, that soon led the suffering 
French workers to clamor for repeal of the short day laws of 
the revolution of 1848. In the aggressiveness of both employ- 
ers and workmen, the arbitration court, in order to exist, would 
be so bound to satisfy each side in the matter of justice that the 
power of compulsion would amount to little. The record shows 
this to be true in New Zealand. Even there does the court 
really compel submission to the right, or does it not simply try 

1903, dissatisfaction has increased, with one or two important cases in which 
employees refused to work under the award, and others in which employers 
closed down. Employers refused to take back, when urged by the registrar 
(New Zealand has such an officer now), 70 furniture makers dismissed as 
unable to earn a new wage set. Prosecution of the employers was dismissed, 
as they had not combined to discharge. The 70 left the trade. The worst 
outcome would be such wisdom in the court, and such favoring circum- 
stances, as to keep the system in force until the people had been per- 
manently enfeebled. Nearly all employers are now organized into unions, 
and no trade of importance is not under an award. Permission to work for 
less than the rate must be approved by the trade union, and it is seldom 
given. To men shut out entirely the state gives relief work. 



Conciliation^ Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 715 

to show what the right is, and rely on its compelHng force 
among a civiHzed people?^ 

Compulsory Arbitration by Public Opinion. Hence, there 
is a kind of compulsory arbitration that would be effectual in 
this country, and easily established, namely, decision by public 
opinion as to what was right or wrong in the contention, after 
an able state board of mediation, under the present power of 
such boards to summon witnesses, had promptly investigated a 
dispute and published its report. Bringing the exact facts to 
the people, whose injury gives them a right to know, is a good 
effect of the New Zealand law. For instance, if the board 
found true and published the claim of Michigan coal mine 
operators, in the strike of 1902, that their lowest pay for 
common labor around the mines was $2 a day, of the same 
grade that brought $1.50 or less in railroad section work, the 
strikers might soon have given up their demand for an increase ; 
and a great corporation having to support with proved facts its 
assertion that there was nothing sufficiently questionable to 
arbitrate, and that it was not taking advantage of inability of 

^No Compulsion Not Based on Right Exists or continues now in any 
of the settled American laws. The difficulty, under the effort of officials to 
please any class who may be aggressive, is to secure that measure of com- 
pulsion which right requires. Society's various forms of successful control 
over capitalists, especially in taxation and in factory laws, are clearly based 
on necessity for public welfare, yet this control is often poorly enforced. To 
no important extent, without shifting the cost by means of higher price, 
could capitalists be compelled to do what they reasonably considered unjust. 
While to be useful to its owner, "capital must be invested, and only a small 
portion could flow out of the country," it need not be invested noiv or here, 
or in this ivay. Other times or other states will answer its owners' purposes. 
The power of capitalists (especially when competitors, not monopolists) to 
close factories, leave men idle, and make supplies scarce, is not dangerous; 
because, under ordinary conditions, using the power would bring greater loss 
to them than to the public. When not made monopolists by culpable favors, 
they will not thus try to force the public unjustly. But the public cannot 
unjustly force them. To attempt to force them to continue business against 
their will would be confiscating their property and making them slaves. 
Their ivilling cooperation in production is necessary to prevent want and 
starvation. State ownership of industry, under socialism, is good enough for 
a tribe, but could not long give the people a living under the complex and 
crowded civilization of to-day. No societ\^ can depart far from the 
nearest attainable justice without sinking into decay. God forgot nothing 
in his system of checks and balances between man and man. 



yi6 Getting a Living. 

workmen to move, would grant a just demand rather than incur 
from pubHc odium the risk of a righteous boycott and of more 
stringent labor laws. Fortunately, all the power of the govern- 
ment could not in this country make a dispute stay settled if 
elements of injustice to either side remained. Bringing out 
clearly, for the parties as well as the public, the facts and the 
right in the case, is therefore the essential matter, not power or 
compulsion. The reports of the board, and its judicial recom- 
mendations, written by men expert in economics and industry, 
would soon settle — for employers, workmen, and the public — 
what wages were right in a set of conditions. Under economic 
principles thus established, unjust demands would seldom be 
made; and as both sides came to understand these principles 
better, and as effective publicity became certain, strikes might 
be as nearly eliminated as they can ever be under the liberty to 
choose whether or not to work or to employ." 

^A Notable Success in Such Arbitration. The above plan is that pro- 
posed by Charles Francis Adams in 1901, and presented by him in the Civic 
Federation's convention, December, 1902. He illustrated it with the prompt 
settlement by public opinion of the strike of Boston and Maine engineers 
in 1877, after the state railroad commissioners had investigated the strike 
and reported, their only power being to make recommendations. "The effect 
was immediate. An authentic record was before the community; and public 
opinion, crystallizing at once, made itself felt. The atmosphere cleared at 

once, and no further action was found necessary The publicity removes 

from the path the impediment of false pride — that fatal stumbling block 
in the case of nine strikes out of ten. An opportunity gracefully to recede 
would be offered, and responsibility for obstinate persistence would be 
placed." The general public is now disposed to judge a strike on its merits. 
Those employers and those workmen who take a partisan view, and those 
persons in whom sympathy displaces judgment, seem to be too few to affect 
the justice of the verdict. (For cases of report by boards, see p. 695.) 

An Easy System to Establish. Such a board as Mr. Adams recom- 
mends may be formed by slight changes In the present conciliation laws of 
different states. The Massachusetts board, in its duty to go to the parties in 
a trade dispute, and to endeavor to induce them to submit the case to it or to 
a local board, may, "if it deems it advisable," investigate and publish a 
report assigning blame (since 1902 it shall investigate and may publish). 
By the Illinois law of 1901, in case of a strike affecting the public with 
respect to food, fuel, transportation, or otherwise, and neither side in the 
dispute consents to submit it to arbitration, the state board, after due effort at 
conciliation, may proceed to investigate, summon witnesses, examine books of 
account, recommend, and publicly report. The New York board announced 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 717 

An Agreement With the Union, fixing wages and other 
conditions in advance for one or several years, has become quite 
common. Some such agreement, though not for a fixed time, 

in 1903 its intention of doing this hereafter. The Missouri law of March, 
1901, requires from the board the same investigation when conciliation fails, 
but requires also that it shall publish its report in some local newspaper. 
This board, therefore, composed of the right men, is what is desired. It 
would seem to be an easy matter to establish constitutionally by law a prac- 
tice of investigating and reporting on every dispute involving not less than 
twenty-five or fifty men, in case of failure of conciliation. Certainty of 
investigation and report would prevent disputes from occurring or being 
prolonged on any but claims of some soundness. 

Great Possibilities. Prof. J. B. Clark's strong reason for this kind of 
authoritative arbitration is that the public now tolerates strike intimidation 
for fear that strict suppression would involve greater wrong in the em- 
ployer's exploitation of ^vorkers whose union effort had thus been thwarted. 
The proposal of a governor to shoot down with Gatling guns Negroes 
brought into his state to displace strikers indicates his estimate of public 
opinion in this matter. After a board's publication of the just rates and 
conditions, intimidation by strikers refusing to accept them could be sup- 
pressed without hesitation, and on men accepting work attempts to place 
odium would fail. Thus would come an easy solution of the large and ugly 
problem of picketing, boycotting, and injunctions, and a removal of the bad 
monopoly power possessed by many unions, since no exclusion of scabs or 
imported men w^ould be practicable with strikers refusing to accept just rates 
published. On the other hand, if the rich employer refused to pay such rates, 
the odium on him and on scabs would be too great to resist. Such results in 
time are not too much to expect from mere publicity. It is public ignorance 
that provides the conditions in which the long list of industrial wrongs 
flourish. Bad power over labor would be removed not only from unions 
but also from corporations whose men were able to strike and thus have their 
grievances made known. Under such publicity, with acceptance by strikers 
of what was just, victimization would not be attempted. And on both sides 
self-reliance and merit would not be enfeebled, as in Australia, but would be 
encouraged, the state doing no bargaining for people but simply providing 
(as it does now in other lines) such reliable information that advantage 
taking would be reduced to the minimum. 

The Coal Strike Commission Recommended enactment by Congress of 
a bill proposed by Charles Francis Adams (Labor Bulletin No. 46), author- 
izing the President to appoint a commission like itself to compulsorily 
investigate and report on any dispute (affecting inter-state commerce) 
deemed by him to endanger the people's supply of a necessary commodit}^ 
In the commission's opinibn such a report, placing the blame, would have 
greatly shortened the coal strike, by preventing each side from taking the 
position of total disregard for the public need of coal. The commission 



71 8 Getting a Living. 

has always been necessary, at least to the extent of tacit assent, 
by the workmen as to the wages and hours, and by the employer 
as to the quantity and quality of work done. When trade 

suggested also provision by the states for such compulsory investigation and 
report in large strikes. As is indicated in the new laws mentioned above, 
this system of compulsory investigation seems destined to prevail. In the 
states mentioned it is regarded as promising. (See World's Work, Dec. 
1902.) For an extraordinary strike Mr. Adams would have the President 
or Governor appoint a temporary board of the ablest men, such as would not 
serve on the regular state board. Unionism fears compulsion In publicity as 
in arbitration, but as a rule is not unduly secret. Yet see pp. 696, 723. 

Recommendations by Other Bodies. Compulsory publicity was rec- 
ommended by the railway strike commission of 1895 — that Congress form 
a permanent commission to report on railway strikes. But the plan then 
was, where both parties previously agreed, to make obedience compulsory If 
the pressure of public opinion was not sufficient. The Indiana board recom- 
mended in 1899 that (i) it be made unlawful to lock out or strike without 
first attempting arbitration, and (2) that if a strike then occur the parties 
be compelled to arbitrate if the stage of violence be reached. The same year 
the Ohio board recommended that In a strike menacing the peace disobe- 
dience to the state board's award, In a compulsory Investigation, be pun- 
ished as contempt of court. (Indus. Com. XVII. 701.) But these proceedings, 
it seems, would not be constitutionally effective, and would be unnecessary in 
case of compulsory investigation and report, with suppression of violence. 
Compulsory publicity was favored by the British labor commission of 1894. 
In 1903 compulsory arbitration was recommended by New York's governor 
for concerns producing necessaries, and by Pennsylvania's for strikes en- 
dangering the peace. The Industrial Commission, in 1902, recommended 
*'that whoever inaugurates a lockout or strike without first petitioning for 
arbitration, or assenting to it when offered, should be subjected to an 
appropriate penalty." Prof. Ely ("Industrial Societ>'," 1903) approves 
this, and also compulsory publicity, for industries of moderate size; but 
for industries on which the public welfare Is vitally dependent — coal 
mining, the trusts in general, railways, lighting plants, and similar mo- 
nopolies — he recommends "everything short of absolutely compulsory 
acceptance of awards," that is, "heavy penalty for a strike or lockout 
without first going through all the prescribed steps to arbitrate the diffi- 
culty," and says "the duty of preserving the continuous operation of these 
Industries Is like that of the prevention of crime." 

But it seems that reform of tariff, corporation, and railroad laws would 
leave no trust with undue power over employees or consumers (p. 245) ; 
that even now, despite their power, trusts will almost invariably be fair to 
employees, often generous, for the sake of efficiency and to avoid public 
disfavor; and that, especially after the law reforms, trusts will be com- 
pelled to be fair If workers do their part (never to be escaped without 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 719 

unions appear, the workmen assent, not each for himself, but 
all in a mass through the union officials. Collective bargaining, 
under ordinary conditions, has chiefly been collective with the 
workmen only, agreement with the union officials being made 
by each employer separately. More than a hundred railroad 
companies in the United States, each for itself, now makes 
agreements regularly with each of the different brotherhoods 
or unions of railroad employees.^ All the negotiating as to 
wages and hours is done when the agreement is signed. Griev- 
ances adjusted afterward, by the various officials of the 
union — local, district, or national — relate to observance of the 
agreement's terms. But in many cases the bargaining has 
become collective on the side of the employers also. Aggres- 
siveness of trade unions in England led employers to unite to 
resist them nearly a century ago. In 1901 there were in Great 
Britain 870 separate associations of employers (France had 
over 2,000 of all kinds) formed mainly for wage bargaining, 
other associations not being counted. As the workmen of an 
industry have become more strongly unionized, the natural 
tendency has been for the employers in a city, or in a district, 
to act together in matters of wages. In the larger cities there 
are permanent associations of employing contractors in each of 
the now numerous building trades {26 associations were in the 
New York lockout of 1903) ; and at many places employers in 
some trades, especially those in which employers work them- 
selves, are united in a kind of labor unions, such as the team 
owners' union, and the boss barbers' protective association. In 
some cases united action by employers is through a national 
association, as when the United Typothetse agreed in 1899 with 

enfeeblement) of self-reliandy going after the best wages in reach. For 
entire prevention of strikes among employees of railroads, street car lines, 
etc., new laws imposing effective penalties would be constitutional, but are 
undesirable, for reasons of avoiding taxing the public to favor the workers, 
and of avoiding curtailment of the worker's liberty. (See next chapter, 
also pages 387, 540, 708-10.) 

'"These contracts embody rates of pay and rules governing overtime, treat- 
ment of employees, and for prevention of unjust discharge or suspension." 
{Labor Bulletin No. 8.) In other trades in America there are thousands of 
signed local agreements, and perhaps a larger number formed not by sign- 
ing, but by mere compliance. The machinists' international union enforces 
some 2,000 local agreements. 



720 Getting a Living. 

the International Typographical Union on the change from ten 
to nine hours of work per day. The building employers' asso- 
ciations unite into a local federation in some of the large cities, 
and into a national association of several trades, chiefly those 
in masonry. On the side of the workmen the negotiating, when 
not done by national or district representatives, is done by a 
local union that is nearly always a branch of a national body. 

Collective Bargaining Enforceable at Law, ''between asso- 
ciations legally organized and financially responsible on both 
sides, . . . holds the future of the peace of labor,"^ in the opin- 
ion of many of the leading authorities on the subject. This 
means that on one side the employers of a trade in a city or 
district will be incorporated under law into an association, and 
on the other side the union of wage workers will also be legally 
incorporated ; and that such as the present time contracts of the 
two organizations, fixing wages and other conditions of labor, 
will then be enforceable by each against the other, by means 
of suit in court for damages caused by default. But there are 
grave objections to such a cast-iron system of industry. The 
advantage to w^age workers of having each of the important 
employers bound by a contract enforceable against his associa- 
tion (and by it enforceable against him in expulsion or in 
forfeiture of a deposit), would be greatly outweighed by the 
disadvantage of having them united into a compact and per- 
manent monopoly, whose members, by refraining from bidding 
against one another, in offering higher wages as at present, 
could easily overmaster a union comprising every workman in 
the trade. Competition to hire among employers, each seeking 
to produce and sell all he can, is by far the greatest force in 
raising wages.- Demand by workers for extra pay is futile 
when not met on the other side by a strong and generally a 
competitive demand for men. Moreover, the injury to society 
from such a guild of employers, in stifling competition and in 
discouraging improvement, would reach all workmen in higher 
prices for the trade's product, and its own workmen in limited 

'F. J. Stlmson, "Labor in Its Relation to Law," 1895. C. D. Wright, 
A''. A. Revie'UJ, Jan. 1902. Mr. Stimson, in his hand book of 1896, says such 
bargaining "will be the great emancipation of the future." 

'Hadley, "Economics," 367. See also paragraphs in this book on sympa- 
thetic strikes, chap. IX. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. y2i 

output and reduced employment/ Almost equal to disruption 
of a union might be the attainment by it of such power as to 
force employers to combine to meet it. This crisis in unionism 
has now been reached at a number of places, as is shown in 
local combination into one body to resist it of employers in 
many trades. The quick disruption of the American Railway 
Union, in the strike of 1894, and the wholesale blacklisting that 
followed, were largely due to the strike's effect to solidify the 
general managers' association at Chicago, and to arouse its 
relentless opposition. 

Trade Unions Object to Incorporating, though many of 
those in New York State have done so, as some of the em- 
ployers' associations there have done also. The special statutes 
of a number of states to encourage union incorporation, which 
may be done anywhere under general laws, were mostly enacted 
about fifteen years ago as a favor to unions, before their present 
decided opposition to incorporation had developed. The incor- 
porated unions are very few compared with the total number. 
The reasons for the opposition are that unions cannot afford to 
hire such able lawyers as those of the employers; that judges, 
practically all belonging to the upper classes, are disposed to view 
the labor question from the side of the capitalists ; that a union's 
benefit funds might be taken by suit for damages ; that its effi- 
ciency as a bargaining and striking body would be impaired by 
its liability to damages or injunction in favor of the employer, 
and its discipline w^ould be impaired by such liability in favor 
of aggrieved members. In reply it is to be said that the benefit 
funds might be placed in separately incorporated branches. 
The railway brotherhoods thus administer their millions of 
insurance. 

^How to Preserve Competition among employers, and how to save 
would-be employers from being clubbed away from an industry, is a problem 
for the public in this age of pools and trusts. In some cities the cut stone 
trade and the plumbing trade has each been made a high-price monopoly by 
means of agreements between the employers and those who produce or sell 
supplies; while perfection in exploiting consumers and excluded workers has 
been attained for a time in many cases of the exclusive agreement (page 
236), in which the union and the emplo5'ers' association rob the public and 
divide the spoil. Fortunately, as shown in many decisions (pages 210, 222, 
558), the courts, while permitting all the combination in unions and trusts 
that is beneficial, are discerning and suppressing that which is predatory. 
46 



^22 Getting a Living. 

The Taff Vale Decision. As to the fear of not receiving 
justice from courts, the union has, on the contrary, been 
specially favored for many years, not only in lenience toward 
violence and boycotting, but in being permitted to exercise great 
power without being held as a body to responsibility, the only 
liability being that of officers and strikers as individuals, and 
these escaping generally by not having property above the 
amount exempt from attachment. But as legal restraint is not 
to be avoided by merely refusing to incorporate, and as a union, 
though classed with those voluntary bodies of which any one 
member may be held liable for all the debts, is not to be deemed 
such a partnership with justice to members individually — for 
these reasons it has come about, illustrating the adequacy of 
our system of laws, that unions are now being held to the cor- 
poration's responsibility whether they are incorporated or not. 
Though the British statutes of 1871 and 1876 (which, taking 
away from unions their illegality of being in restraint of trade, 
gave them privileges, especially when registered, in owning 
property and holding embezzling officers to account) — though 
they expressly relieved the union from liability to members or 
others, — these unions had become so rich, powerful, and ably 
managed that the Taff Vale injunction of 1901 against the 
Amalgamated Railway Servants (against the union itself, not 
simply its officers individually as before) was carried up to and 
sustained by the House of Lords, the highest court. The just 
and reasonable ground was taken that any society, whether 
incorporated or not, is liable which owns funds and infligts 
damage by directing its agents, and that the exemptions in the 
statutes did not neutralize the liability implied in their pro- 
visions as to holding property and performing acts. The result 
was that in 1902 the Taff Vale company was awarded damages 
to the amount of $115,000 for the injury to its business by 
specifically illegal ''watching and besetting." With other 
voluntary bodies than unions this rule had been in force in 
England before. 

In America unions have never been excepted by statute, and 
the union itself has repeatedly been made a party to injunction 
cases, in being forbidden to inflict injury, and now at last its 
own liability, with that also of its members individually, is 



ConcUiation, Arbitration, and CoIIecfiz'c Bargaini)ig. 723 

apparently to be more generally and more effectively enforced 
in holding to account in damages. In 1903, at Rutland, Vt., 
$2,500, as compensation for injury to business by intimidation, 
were awarded by a jury to an employer against a union and 
also its members individually, the latter's property being at- 
tached when the suit was begun; and in injunction cases of 
1901-02, at Ansonia and Waterbury, Conn., the individual 
property of many union members was attached in the em- 
ployer's damage suits, and the funds of about twenty unions. 
Similar cases of holding a union and its members to account 
occurred in 190 1-3 at Dayton, O., Evansville, Ind., Danbury, 
Conn., and Chicago ; while lately at Bergin, Canada, a number 
of strikers in an unincorporated union of wood workers were 
enjoined and mulcted in damages, and their homes and house- 
hold effects were attached. Such property of workers would 
doubtless be exempt in most of the states. 

But the Question of Incorporation is Not Important. 
Unions cannot be compelled to incorporate, as some have 
proposed, with statutes preventing their effective existence as 
voluntary bodies. Such action would be barred by constitu- 
tional 'rights of liberty and lawful assembly or association. A 
bill for this purpose was before the Connecticut legislature in 
1903. While their motive, similar to their hostility toward 
injunctions and the militia, is questionable in the desire to 
exert power and yet escape responsibility, their objection is 
good in the fact that as voluntary bodies, instead of corpora- 
tions, they have much more liberty in changing rules and 
maintaining discipline.^ The somewhat greater difficulty of 

'A Union, by a Mere Majority Vote, if taken in compliance with its 
constitution and by-laws, may make any rule not unlawful or against public 
policy — may assess and fine at will, exclude or expel, or may abolish a 
benefit to which a member has paid dues for years, — yet if the action is 
regularly taken he cannot be heard to complain in court. When he joined 
the union he agreed to its constitution and the rules for changing it. It is to 
avoid being brought into court by members fined or expelled that the im- 
mensely wealthy and successful New York Stock Exchange remains unincor- 
porated. To a large extent, in its object of maintaining rates of commission 
and rules of selling, it is a brokers' trade union, for a place in whose limited 
membership as much as $80,000 has been paid. A corporation, on the con- 
trary, is created b\' the state, and is subject to its close supervision. (All 
phases of union incorporation are treated in a symposium by many writers, 



724 Getting a Living. 

reaching the funds of an unincorporated union by damage 
suit is balanced by the fact that also each of its members, for 
its acts and debts, is liable individually, which is not the case 
with lawful acts and debts of a corporation, in whose formation 
the main purpose is to have individual liability limited. Collec- 
tion of union debts or damages from members individually 
might make them prefer incorporation. A member is not liable 
for the unincorporated union's act unless he voted for or took 
part in it, but he is then liable for the wrong doing of all. 
Incorporation would not protect members participating from 
being made individual defendants with the union in damage 
suits arising from its unlawful acts. The common objection 
of employers to dealing with the union because it is irrespon- 
sible would not be noticeably changed by incorporation, nor 
would the union's danger of litigation trumped up to destroy it. 
The local union has no funds of consequence, the national body's 
benefit funds would be kept separate and out of reach, and a 
union's funds can be taken as it is with practically the same 
effect as if it were incorporated. The union itself, then as now, 
would not be responsible (but the individuals) for law or con^ 
tract breaking by officers or members unless it was done in 
pursuance of the union's rules or orders, unless the officer had 
the discretionary power which makes his act that of the union, 
or unless the law breaking was so aided and abetted as to make 
it the union's own act.^ If responsibility in damages was not 

including some able lawyers, in the Civic Federation's monthly journal, 
New York, April, 1903.) 

^Need the Union Fear the Law? A union that clearly tries to keep the 
law is not likely to have trouble in this respect. Why should its funds be 
more in danger of suit from fault of its officials than is the property of a 
railway or other employer of agents? The claim that the Taff Vale 
damages were for an individual's act not authorized by the union resembles 
unionism's usual denial of complicity — a denial hardly to be sustained in 
court (page 214). The assertion that British unionism, in its present agita- 
tion for a statute widening picketing and protecting funds, will now have to 
fight over (to regain immunity from damage suits) its battles won previous 
to 1876, implies that, to be effective, it must violate law and use intimidation. 
(See Taff Vale article Rev. of Rev., Feb. 1903.) By unionism's best mem- 
bers and by its outside friends, this is not to be believed. Unionism is too 
sound to need the aid of guerrilla warfare. The charge of aristocratic bias 
in courts is refuted by a House of Lords decision, in Allen vs. Flood, that 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 725 

desirable for obtaining agreements, a union, or an association 
of employers, would keep its funds small and rely on assesij- 
ments ; while if such responsibility was advantageous a deposit 
could be put up by each side, as is now done in some cases. The 
employer's plea of duress in being forced into the agreement, 
by which the New York garment workers, though having had 
hundreds of such forfeiture contracts, have been prevented 
from collecting any deposits, could doubtless be overcome now 
if the duress were only threat of lawful strike, without involv- 
ing unlawful picketing or boycotting. Out of i 1,000 deposited 
with trustees by the British shoe workers' national union, Lord 
James as referee, in 1899, declared £300 forfeited for breach of 
a national agreement by the London branch union, and that 
sum was paid over to the employers' association. 

The Only Changes Needed, it seems, are ( i ) for the union 
to give up its effort to take advantage of unlawful acts and yet 
escape responsibility — for it to come out frankly and gain re- 
spect and dignity by incorporating, asking no undue release, 
when incorporation laws have been enacted better suited for its 
collective bargaining; (2) for the employer to assert in the 
courts all his rights to compensation for illegal acts of the 
union and its members, but to give up effort to take unfair 
advantage by premature injunction; and especially (3) for the 
employer to abandon his effort to beat back the rise of union- 
ism. A part of the latter effort, in some cases it seems, is his 
demand for union incorporation — a reason given by some of 
the coal operators in 1902 for refusal to deal with the union. 
In such dealing, as in any transaction, the matter of responsi- 
bility is well provided for in its effect on the price and terms. 
Where not monopolistic by public permission of law breaking, 
the union knows that its rules must be right, and that it must 

was too favorable to unionism to stand under natural law. (Pages 210, 
222.) The weakness of unionism's contention for irresponsibility at law is 
obvious in an article in American Federationist, June, 1903. Unionism has 
outgrown its need for "collective action without legal collective respon- 
sibility." British Columbia's new law (p. 573), releasing the union and 
its members from liability, did not, it is to be hoped, spring from the senti- 
ment back of the recent railway strike there {Outlook, Sept. 19) — a strike 
unusually lawless in boycotting, and in radical political intrigue from 
tvvd new unions of the Pacific states, one of miners and one of railway men. 



726 Getting a Living, 

keep agreements, if it is to obtain more of them, or better ones. 
Knowledge with each side that the agreement is the best to be 
obtained is better than legal compulsion. With strong legal 
means for enforcement, contracts would be made shorter, or 
not made at all, if there were probability of a desire to be 
released from them. Going to law answers very well to settle 
up a past contract, and bring business relations to an end ; but 
as both the employer and the union desire their business rela- 
tions to continue, legal compulsion, whatever the means, would 
probably be little used. At most, it would only secure perform- 
ance of a contract for time yet to expire, and would add to the 
difficulty of renewal. The addition to the risk of trouble here 
would probably outweigh the subtraction from the risk of the 
contract's being broken. Hence, the present system developed 
further, as set forth in the next few pages, seems to be the 
correct one for the times. As the employers act together in a 
voluntary association, the freedom of each to withdraw and 
grant separately the union's demand gives the workmen the 
great advantage of the employers' competition with one an- 
other; while it gives the public, in the unwillingness of enter- 
prising employers to be bound, a safeguard against guild 
monopoly. Fortunately, in many occupations, self-interest will 
keep employers separate, or but loosely organized, leaving full 
opportunity for individual choice, upon which progress de- 
pends. It is really an advantage to the union also that it can- 
not hold the employer by law to the agreement, since the union 
receives no money, the real contract being with each worker 
separately according to the agreement's terms ; and that hence 
it must keep the workmen of the trade well organized, and 
continually prepared for a strike, in order to obtain and carry 
out satisfactory agreements. When it becomes divided and 
weak, no contract or law will prevent the employer from taking 
advantage of it in exacting better terms for himself.^ 

^To Farm Out Labor, as does an Italian padrone, or a Chinese company- 
supplying an employer with coolies, is not desired by the union. The promise 
on its side is simply to use its fining and expelling power to hold members to 
the agreement, which is only on the terms to be followed when the labor 
contract is made with workers individually. In a few exceptional cases, as 
with the longshoremen and garment workers, the union makes the additional 
agreement to supply, as far as practicable, the workers needed, but is not a 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. y2y 

Negotiation, Not Arbitration, therefore, is now apparently 
accepted by economists as the solution for the present of the 
problem of labor and capital. "Arbitration is never accepted 
until each party to a dispute is equally afraid of the other ; and 
when they have reached that point they can adopt something 
better than arbitration — namely, negotiation."^ Practical men 

contractor to furnish men, a condition being that the employer may hire out- 
siders when the unionists are insufficient. But apart from the labor contract 
made with each worker separately, the union's collective agreement has been 
held in several cases by the supreme court to be legally enforceable in favor 
of the New York cloak makers' union for damages (to the union itself) 
precisely stated in agreements carefully drawn for the many unreliable 
employers of its trade. To the objection that a membership corporation 
could not engage in such business transactions as agreements on wages, the 
reply was made, upheld by the court, that the agreements were not for the 
union's profit, but were the means of carrying out its object of benefiting its 
members. (Indus. Com. XVII. 617.) But in other trades there is generally 
no desire to provide for other means of enforcement than the union's power 
to call a strike, and the employer's power to discharge men or end the agree- 
ment. The proposal of seven great employers and lawyers on the British 
labor commission of 1894, that provision be made for agreements holding 
the union and the employers' association liable for breach by any member, 
was opposed by unionists, if enacted would not be utilized, and would not 
be very effective unless by some compulsion withdrawal were prevented. 

^J. R. Commons, Re<v. of Rev., March, 1901. 

"Nothing to Arbitrate" is a reply which, if made with readiness to 
frankly explain, marks a proper attitude with either side in the stage of 
equal negotiation. Each side then renders what the other deems it best to 
stand out for, or no sale is made. In buying and selling anything except 
labor, no capable man would think of having a third person to reason with 
the other part\' as to what his price ought to be. Where labor, in intelli- 
gence and freedom not to contract, is about equal with capital, agreement 
usually takes place with the promptness and peace that prevail in other im- 
portant contracting. It is where w^orkers not thus capable are imposed uponi 
or are unreasonable — where the employer refuses to treat or negotiations are 
broken off — that intervention in conciliation or arbitration is most useful. 
Any condition attracting attention requires a civil explanation, and if the 
public is disturbed its mediation cannot rightly be repelled as meddling 
unless, as sometimes happens, its sentimentalism gives the workers undue 
hopes (the political settlement of the coal strike of 1900 some thought had 
this effect in 1902), and makes both present and future conditions worse for 
all. Society's implied contract with the employer, when he invested his 
capital, excludes such intervention, and his societal trust requires him to 
resist unsound claims as well as not to impose on workers. Arbitration, 
generally acceptable to both sides where needed for interpreting, like a court, 



728 Getting a Living. 

have "agreed that arbitration is impossible without organization, 
and that two equally powerful organizations can negotiate as 
well as arbitrate." In this most Jiighly developed system of 
making the wage agreement, arbitration by a third party (like 
the decision of a law court) is used only in case of local dis- 
putes to interpret the terms of the agreement previously signed 
— never to determine what ought to be done in an agree- 
ment that is yet to be made. Such is the arbitration of the 
longshoremen with the lake dock managers, of the boot and 
shoe workers in some states, and of the typographical union 
with the newspaper publishers' association. But that system 
comes nearest to perfection, in British cotton manufacturing 
and in Illinois coal mining, in which traveling experts, one 
representing the employers and the other the employees, give 
all their time to settling local disputes passed up to them over 
several steps of appeal from foremen and local union officials. 
The two experts reach and agree upon quickly, under the terms 
of the state or national agreement, practically exact justice in 

a past agreement, is proper also to fix a contract yet to be made, and as a last- 
resort is usually desired by one or both parties, where a dispute causing 
injury has provoked such ill will as to preclude a mutual settlement so sat- 
isfactory as any award likely to be made. 

What Questions are Arbitrable? As arbitration of one's right to his 
house, or even to his child, must be accepted in court when a claim is suffi- 
cient to bring the case there, so arbitration of any principle, or its application 
— of the commonest right to conduct one's business — is desirable as a last 
resort, and is sometimes gladly accepted, where a sufficient contest makes 
questionable which course is just; though the existence or use of no right or 
principle clear to one's conscience is to be submitted to arbitration unless 
there are good reasons for its not being clear to others. The rule that hours 
or wages are arbitrable, but not principles, such as the right to join a union 
or to hire non-unionists, is hardly a rule after all. The question is the 
expediency, and the justice under the conditions, of exercising the admitted 
right not to recognize the union, as it is of exercising the admitted right to 
refuse to buy labor above a certain wage. The difference is that the Steel 
Corporation in 1901 cared too much for the matter of recognition to submit 
it, as this country would have submitted a trivial affair to The Hague 
tribunal, but not the Spanish war. "Thou shalt not steal" is not to be ques- 
tioned, but whether it applies may be. For a wage dispute authoritative 
investigation seems to be a perfect remedy when made by a just and able 
board, since it practically settles the rights, but leaves them more open to 
review than does an award to be endured or broken. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 729 

every case, and thus for years at a time with many employers 
avoid occasion for arbitration by the deciding: vote of an out- 
side referee/ 



^The prevalence of joint committees in Great Britain is indicated by fhe 
fact that of 430,000 workers whose pay was raised in 1901, and of 493,000 
sustaining decreases, only 2 per cent were engaged in strikes over wages. 

How Unionism Wins a Welcome. Before employers have accepted 
unionism as having a right to exist, and as not being outside intermeddling, 
the local union's business agent or walking delegate is greatly disliked by 
them, sometimes justly by reason of his extreme partisanship. But where 
cordial relations have been developed between union and employer the 
union's agent is welcomed, as a man with power to hold the workers to what 
is just. He then frowns on trumped up contentions, and often takes the 
employer's side. W. E. Weyl, in T/ie Outlook of July 19, 1902, explains 
why at the Pennsylvania anthracite mines, after the strike of 1900, partial 
toleration of the union (unlike the full recognition at mines in Illinois) in 
permitting it to organize locally, but in refusing to deal with its national 
and district officials (or even with local unions to any completeness), pre- 
vented those officials from controlling the local unions with the power of 
suspension, and of withholding strike funds, and hence the men of the new- 
ly formed locals indulged continually in petty disputes and strikes, asserting 
their unionism in an exasperating way to contest the authority of the bosses. 
Cases are related of sauciness from boys, relying on the union's backing. 
Just enough unionism has been admitted to make relations disagreeable. 
More of it brings smooth and just working, especially in the carrying of 
disputes to higher union officials removed from excited local feeling. 

How Agreements With Employers are Made. The longshoremen on 
the lakes, two delegates from each local union, meet twice a year with the 
twenty or thirty dock managers, each attending for himself. "For ten to 
fifteen days they higgle and bluff and parry until they can agree on wages 
and conditions for every port and kind of traffic under the joint jurisdic- 
tion Each side is not fully satisfied with the agreement made, but each 

is convinced that nothing better can be secured with a strike or lockout. In 
this way they have created the highest form of industrial peace — namely, 
constitutional government." The soft coal mine workers and employers of 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois meet yearly to renew their con- 
tract, 195 operators in 1900, each for himself, and 450 miners sent as repre- 
sentatives by local unions. A unanimous vote is required on the trade 
agreement. "The theory is that there are just two parties to the bargain, 
the employer and the workman; and like any voluntary purchase or sale, 
each party must consent to all the terms." What keeps them together at the 
convention, sometimes two weeks, until an agreement is reached, "is the 
positive knowledge that otherwise the mines will be absolutely shut down, 
and neither the miner will earn wages nor the operator reap profits." The 



730 Getting a Living. 

Recognition of the Union, which is necessary in this system 
of fixing the wage contract, to be made with each worker indi- 
vidually, means agreeing with its officials as representatives of 
all the workers, and not determining with each worker sepa- 
rately the contract made with him. The fullest recognition is 
that of meeting on an equality in joint committees, or in conven- 
tions like those of the coal industry — the two sides cooperating 
in enforcing the joint rules. The least recognition is that of 
unwillingly paying the union scale of wages (dictated by the 
union alone, according to its power) in order to avoid a strike 
or the odium of being a scab concern, while refusing to meet 
committees from the union, and insisting upon negotiating with 
none but one's own employees, separately or in committees. 
In many industries, in cities where the union is well established^ 
employers simply conform to its rules, and the question of 
recognizing it may never be thought of. Recognition becomes 
a great issue when the union is being newly established in a 
city or district. This has been the chief matter of dispute in 
the anthracite coal district of Pennsylvania, whose workers, 
after repeated failure of unions and many years of disorganiza- 
tion, were partly unionized before the successful strike of 1900, 

longshoremen meet as a house of commons, and the dock managers in a 
separate room as a house of lords. The mine operators and miners meet 
together in the same hall. (See the instructive article cited from Prof. Com- 
mons.) Similar agreements, but with less perfect control of the field, are 
now made by the United Mine Workers with employers in over a dozen 
of the coal states. A great dispute in the coal trade of the Southwest w^as 
decided in 1903 by Judge Gray of the late anthracite commission as 
referee ; and for three weeks, at Pittsburgh, Kansas, the first convention 
was held in which the operators were fully represented and the union fully 
recognized. Sometimes the agreement's machinery fails to work well, 
as was lately the case with a dispute of printers at Spokane, and with a 
new local union of Missouri miners who defied the agreement and Presi- 
dent Mitchell. 

In various trades hundreds of agreements are made less formally than 
in conventions — by the local union's committee, to be ratified by the union, 
and signed by the employer or assented to by compliance. In the Boston 
masonry trades the joint board makes the new agreement when the term 
expires, but usually a board is not given this power. Instead there is a 
special committee or convention, having power to act finally, but composed 
of many persons, and taking much time, so that by all the agreement may 
be well understood and assented to. The breaking and abandonment of 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 731 

and afterward somewhat completely, as was shown by the 
unanimity with which the men came out on strike in 1902. The 
demand in this strike, for a twenty per cent advance in wages 
(the commission awarded ten per cent), was believed to have 
been open to easy compromise if full recognition had been 
accorded. The main object of employers in refusing recogni- 
tion is to keep down the power of the union, and keep free 
from its control, by making membership of little value to a 
worker, so that men may be dealt with separately. Many of 
them have power then to do little else than submit to the em- 
ployer's terms. ^ 

the machinists' first national agreement in 1901, its first year, was due to 
lack of general assent to it. 

^The Necessity of Unionizing the Workers of Competitors is not 
appreciated by those who condemn extension of unionism into new districts, 
which previously may have enjoyed peace in labor matters. Previous to the 
strike of 1897 the admirable inter-state agreements in the soft coal industry 
were impossible, because of competition in selling coal from southern 
Illinois mine operators paying low wages. (But see in next chapter the 
note on equalizing conditions.) In that year the United Mine Workers 
conquered the whole state of Illinois, starting with but 1,000 members in 
the state, and ending with 35,000. Because southern Illinois mine operators 
were then held by the union to its wages and hours, all the other operators 
of the four states could conform to the union rules and still have an equal 
chance in selling their coal, differences in difficulty of mining, and in 
freights, being balanced by differences in union rates. But to the contin- 
uance of the inter-state agreements there has been a menace from coal mined 
increasingly in West Virginia at low wages by submissive Italians, Negroes, 
and poor native whites, whose yield of profit to the employer comes in part 
from his withholding of a proper support. With some men, and in some 
work, the effect of such a policy to reduce the profit to or below that of 
employers paying good men good wages — an effect coming from lowering 
men's strength and efficiency, and from driving the best of them away — 
may be delayed for some time. Hence, to prepare for a lull in business 
and weaker demand for coal, the United Mine Workers have been zealously 
organizing the miners of West Virginia and Kentucky. They must organize 
the trade with some completeness in order to preserve the inter-state agree- 
ments, which in the four states brought peace to "an industry where, for 
many years, industrial war was chronic, bloodshed frequent, distrust, hatred, 
and poverty universal." (Commons.) In the machinists' strike of 1901 
many employers granted concessions on condition that competitors yielded. 

Strategic Strikes. It was for similar reasons that the Amalgamated 
Association began in 1901 (some of its lodges breaking agreements by 
striking and others refusing to do so) its unsuccessful and much censured 



"j^t^ Getting a Living. 

Keeping the Collective Agreement. Enforcement on both 
sides is entrusted to the union in the coal trade. The employers' 
association, to hold members to the agreement, can use nothing 
but moral suasion. Exclusive agreements and boycotts against 
expelled members are rightly unlawful, soon leading into some 
form of trust monopoly. As employers are competitors, there 
have been cases in England in which forfeiture of a bond as 
high as $10,000 did not prevent one from breaking away from 
the association. The miners' union must save the fair oper- 
ators, as well as its own members, from the cut-throat operator 
who lowers prices by lowering wages. President Mitchell said 
at the close of the convention of 1900: 'T will give notice to 
the operators now that, when they go home, unless they keep 
the agreement inviolate, we will call the men out; and I will 
serve notice on the miners that unless they keep the laws of the 
union we will suspend them." Suspension would exclude men 
from employment in mines where unionists refuse to work with 
outsiders.^ Many unions are so wisely managed that employ- 
strike to compel the steel trust to permit it to unionize some of the mills in 
which for a number of years no union men had been employed. As wages 
and conditions in these mills were about equal to the union scale, and as no 
change of scale was asked, it was said the strikers from the union mills had 
no grievance, but were demanding that the employer, by signing the scale 
and rules for the non-union mills also, force employees to join the union 
against their will. Such, it seems, was the effect in 1898 of the longshore- 
men's national agreement, but theirs are not regular positions like those of 
steel workers. There seemed to be sorr^e truth in the charge that such was the 
steel workers' demand, but by modification, it seems, the later demand was 
simply for the right to unionize men by their consent. As to the absence of 
grievance, the Amalgamated officials said that in order to keep their union 
alive and effective, safety required a strike to unionize the non-union mills, 
since by enlarging the latter the steel trust could depend on them and sup- 
press the union in its other mills. In other occupations, well unionized, 
employers maintain no "balance of power" by means of non-union shops, 
though such a balance is wholesome where the union has a chance to attain 
a labor monopoly. 

^In the agreements of the longshoremen, the shoe workers, and the printers, 
the employers agree to hire unionists only. They have refused this conces- 
sion in coal mining, in the stove trade, and in the metal trades; but gen- 
erally the men of the local unions in these trades have secured it by refusing 
to work with non-unionists. (Commons.) The coal union's strictness in 
holding all to obedience is possible only where the union is strong, and is 
accorded recognition by employers. Censure of union officials, for not better 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 733 

ers even prefer to deal with their officials rather than with 
separated and irresponsible employees. Employers are greatly 
pleased with the working of the agreements mentioned in the 

restraining their men from violence and other foolish action, should be 
tempered with a view of the difficulty of instructing, especially under 
unionism's rapid growth, poor and ignorant men of different races and 
languages, there being more than a dozen languages in the anthracite coal 
district. Next to the public schools, the union is regarded as the most ef- 
fective force by which foreigners are Americanized. The able leadership 
now developing in unions makes demands, not in sudden ultimatums, as 
formerly, but with long notice for negotiation, and seeks to keep agreements 
faithfully, that from removal of uncertainty employers may go ahead 
boldly in production, giving workers most employment and the people best 
service. 

■Reliability of Unions. President Keefe, of the longshoremen's union, 
employed at Buffalo non-union men to take the place of unionists who had 
struck in defiance of their agreements. The coal union's mine committee, 
if a man refuses to work, "shall immediately furnish a man to take such 
vacant place." President Fox, by readiness to revoke the charters of local 
unions of molders, has held them to the national agreement that non-union- 
ists must be allowed to work, union rules to govern shops of whose men 
over half are unionists, but all vacancies to be filled by unionists. (Page 
297.) In only some 25 of the molders' 1,300 agreements are non-unionists 
excluded. "At first the unionists tolerated non-unionists because they had 
to. Like some corporations, many of the unions have learned now that 
monopoly is impossible and unnecessary." (R. M. Easley, McChire's, Oct. 
1902.) Knowledge that disregard of agreements discredits the union, and 
gives employers reason for objecting to dealing with it, has more influence 
to secure the keeping of agreements than would liability to damages for 
breaking them. The continuance of the agreements in the soft coal trade 
is not jeopardized by the fact that over 70 per cent of the awards have been 
against the miners. In the stove trade, under practically unbroken peace 
with molders since 1891, the committee's investigation has repeatedly brought 
a decrease of pay instead of the increase demanded, so that in demands 
the men are now more careful. In the British iron trade, from 1869 to 
1901, the boards settled 1,400 disputes, 25 of them important, with only 3 
short cessations of work. Previously, strikes had been frequent and long. 

But naturally agreements are kept by workers with greatest certainty, 
not when made with separate employers, but when made with employers 
united in a strong association, such as that in the general foundry trade, 
formed in 1898, which in labor disputes protects each of its 500 firms 
($300,000,000 capital, 27,000 men") with its large defense fund, and with 
its commissioner and staff of assistants giving all their time to labor 
matters. 

Unionism's Increased Wisdom and Justice appeared in 1903 in the 



734 Getting a Living. 

note below, and have no desire for a return to former conditions. 
It has been well said that with wage workers, as with society, 
the period of greatest turbulence is when the mass first begin 

New York city central body's expulsion of a union of subway laborers that 
broke its agreement with employers, and in the easy defeat, through with- 
'^.rawal of the central body's support, of a strike by Chicago waiters who 
insisted on dealing with employers separately, not as an association. The 
Chicago Labor Federation (253 unions) came near deciding to support no 
strike by a union not a year old, and did decide to support no strike in 
which it was not asked to conciliate. This makes it a strong force for 
peace. Unionists see the bad effects of the strike fever of 1903 in checking 
building and manufacturing enterprises (high cost can no longer be thrown 
on the consumer in high prices), and they see the coming of harder times 
in the general curtailment, by reason of high prices for labor and materials, 
of the railway improvement carried on so extensively since 1898. The 
San Francisco building trades council voted against further demands in 
wages without its sanction. Unionism is heeding the warning of C. S. 
Darrow, its counsel in the coal strike arbitration, that it is in danger of a 
bad set-back from its selfish exactions. In 1903 agreements tin plate work- 
ers gave up time-honored restrictions that will increase output 15 per cent; 
and New York clothing cutters secured a shorter day by surrendering all 
restrictions of output, a clause being that **the men should do their best 
with due regard to their health and be paid accordingly." New York 
boiler makers and shipbuilders secured higher pay by giving up sympa- 
thetic strikes and interference by delegates with men at work; and all re- 
strictions as to foremen, use of materials and machines, amount done or 
number of machines per man, the employer not to discriminate against 
unionists, but to be free to hire others. But while employers by necessity 
(p. 387) must have a right to discharge without giving a reason (p. 544), 
as was lately ruled by C. D. Wright as umpire for the new anthracite 
board, the union, to avoid destruction, must watch discharge of unionists 
and employment of others (p. 276). The plan of granting a shorter day 
in exchange for abolition of restriction of output, now becoming serious 
it is believed, was favored by 607 out of 920 employers, each with capital 
not below $500,000, that replied to a late inquiry of the Civic Federation. 
Such a compromise has appeared in national agreements with machinists 
and printers. By removal of limitation the men of a shop in one branch 
cf the iron trade earned 28 per cent more in 8 hours than before in 10. 
(Civic Fed. report, 1903, p. 251.) 

A Liberal Agreement is that of the iron molders (p. 294) with the 
employers' association at Philadelphia. It permits piece and premium 
work that does not lower the time rate per day; permits contracting with 
the worker individually on the piece rate for a new piece of work, the just 
rate to be found by time work for a day or two in case of disagreement; 
gives the employer full liberty to use molding machines and to have them 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 735 

to claim a right to share in their government with their ruler, 
previously an autocrat (the railway mobs of 1877 were not 
unionized) ; while the highest development of industry comes 
when unions and employers' associations meet on an equality, 
legislating in peace and justice.^ 

operated by new men; discountenances limitation of output or demand by 
employer for too much work, and for any unfair practice on either side 
each association imposes its discipline. Under such fairness it is not 
strange that in the stove trade the arbitration board of the national agree- 
ment has had but one case in eleven years. Fairness and efficiency rise 
highest under that best government of workers which rests on the consent 
of the governed. 

iThe High Stage of Equal Negotiation is Now Fast Spreading in 
America, but is yet far from its status under the better settled unionism 
of England, In 1902 street car men in Chicago secured by strike an agree- 
ment by which they were given the right to join the union; those dis- 
charged for joining it were reinstated; the companies agreed to treat with 
union committees ; and arbitration was adopted for future disputes. In 
signing the agreement good feeling was mutual. In mutual concessions 
settling a strike of Chicago freight handlers they agreed to give a month's 
notice of strikes in the future. In a strike of street car men at New Haven for 
collective bargaining, and for reinstatement of two dozen men discharged 
for assisting in forming a union, the strikers quickly won all their de- 
mands, deserving and receiving the unanimous support (even to the extent 
of mass meetings) of the best classes in the city, including many stock- 
holders. Chicago associations of team owners, warned by a strike of 
drivers for meat packers and department stores, arranged with the union 
for time agreements and joint boards of arbitration. The coal team owners' 
association has an agreement that is to continue five years. The meat 
packers' teamsters won the right to unionize, denial of which was a partial 
excuse for the violence they resorted to. In scores of other cases new trade 
agreements have lately been formed, with joint committees for settling 
disputes. In 1903 the directors of the New York and New Haven railroad 
took a dispute from the management, granting demands, and reversing the 
managers' refusal to meet a joint committee of all the unions concerned. 
Seven associations of employers, and seven unions, all having relations 
with teaming, have at Chicago one arbitration board; and an association of 
employers there in many trades have a general arbitration and labor board 
headed by an expert, F. W. Job, recently of the state board. The latter 
association, holding daily meetings, takes up the case of each member em- 
ployer struck against, fills his orders or engagements, and protects and 
advises members generally in labor matters. 

As new unions are worst for striking and for unreasonableness, so 
employers without experience with unionism, those in small cities and those 
conducting new trolley lines, are most averse to recognition and mediation. 



736 Getting a Living. 

Since No Power Could Now Eradicate Unionism from 
society, it ought to be recognized, and assisted to free itself 
from its faults. If the steel trust had done in 1901 what some 
expected, but which it was evidently too wise to carry out — 
namely, to have driven the Amalgamated Association from its 
mills — unionism would not have been dead among its em- 
ployees. In its dealings with them they would have been bene- 
fited by the facts that they had organized before, that they could 
secretly organize again, and that other unions continued to have 
public influence. In this way unionism benefits the employees 
of those concerns (usually apart from large cities) that keep it 
away from their own shops by a liberal policy of wages and 
hours ; also employees situated as those of the Carnegie Steel 
Company, which has hired or retained no unionists since the 
great strike of 1892, for whose excesses many would consider 
that the union deserved some punishment. Unreasonableness 
and tyranny of the union excuse the same qualities in the 
employer, who can refuse recognition to the union on the 
ground that it is unfit for it. On the other hand, his uncom- 

It was the unreasonableness of the refusal to recognize that led some 
judges, bankers, and employers to give toward the coal strikers' fund, as 
in the strike of 1889 among half-starved dockers a London employer 
continued the wages of his men that were out on sympathetic strike. 
Trade agreements are formed most easily where both sides are weary of 
fighting. To secure such agreements is a leading effort of state boards, 
as it is of the Civic Federation. By many Massachusetts agreements, 
disputes not settled are referred to the state board. It does not arbitrate 
until work is resumed, as in the coal strike. Cordial recognition enables 
the union to give up exclusion of non-unionists and similar contentions 
(pp. 297, 327). Exclusion is sometimes given up in advance to secure 
recognition. 

In the anthracite strike commission's proceedings the operators avoided 
recognizing the national union, but there is recognition in effect, since their 
own men are united in local unions forming a part of the national and con- 
trolled by it. The award is accepted in a three-year agreement, with a 
joint committee for settling disputes. With such a committee (especially 
outside of the building trades, though there the sympathetic strike is being 
surrendered), there is to be no cessation of work until after the committee 
has failed to agree, and not then if an outside referee is provided for unless 
the dissatisfaction is so great as to break the trade agreement. In trades 
not having agreements many strikes in 1902-3 were settled by outside arbi- 
tration, but more by conciliation. 



Conciliation, Arbitration, and Collective Bargaining. 737 

promising refusal to perceive the necessity of unionism pro- 
vokes much of its bitterness. Tactfully to lead employers and 
wage workers to the high stage of just and equal negotiation — 
to induce both sides to recognize principles not possibly to be 
brushed aside — is the beneficent work of the National Civic 
Federation, of the state conciliation boards, and of every citizen 
whose influence can be made to quicken the march of progress.^ 

^"After all has been said in press and pulpit about the 'dignity of labor,' 
the only dignity that really commands respect is the bald necessity of deal- 
ing with labor on equal terms. The most important result of these trade 
agreements is the new feeling of equality and mutual respect which springs 
up in both employer and employee." (Commons.) This result was noticed 
long ago in England, in the meeting of employers and workmen around 
one table as joint boards of conciliation. The gap between the social posi- 
tion of the one class and that of the other was then wide. Another result 
is that the union falls under control of its best men (not of its extreme agi- 
tators, as where there is attempt to suppress it), and its best men become 
abler and fairer, influencing to their views the rank and file. Employers, 
too, learn to see both sides of the question. 



47 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
COMBINATION AND LIBERTY. 

But a More Excellent Way remains for securing justice, 
peace, and progress than even the best unionism and the best 
collective agreement, the frequent praise of which, through 
this book, is meant to be qualified by the phrases ''where need- 
ed" and "for the present." As social conditions would now be 
considered very bad in which a man had to go armed for bodily 
protection, or in which he and his relatives found it expedient 
to noticeably band together as a clan, so the time will come, if 
progress continues, in which good industrial conditions will be 
evidenced by the absence or unimportance of trade unionism. 
Like militarism, unionism is a necessary evil, the need for 
which we want as small as possible. Though, like national 
war, unionism develops some forms of manly independence, it 
involves the same heavy cost in energy, and is easily glorified 
by its votaries into a false ideal of class loyalty, as bellicoseness 
is made synonymous with patriotism, until in each case re- 
sources are wasted, industry and character are injured, and the 
engine of deliverance turns on its own supporters to destroy 
their liberty. Highest progress requires, not simply that by 
unionism bad forces be met and coped with, but that the bad 
conditions be removed, and the burden and injury of over- 
coming them be thus avoided. 

For the Land of the Free what manner of living is that of 
to-day? A man has to get a permit to work; his efficiency is 
secondary to his possession of a working card, since to hire 
him without a card involves a risk of business loss that makes 
the boldest pause. The case is similar in patronizing an em- 
ployer ; the first question is, not Are his values best? but How 
does he stand with organized labor? In natural effect union- 
ism's power is now forcing employers to organize to meet it, so 
that in many cases each of them is in danger of some form of 

(738) 



Combination and Liberty. 739 

trust boycott from his own class, until in the organizing of 
everybody, as in the carrying of weapons, there is far less peace 
and safety to be enjoyed than where there is no organizing at 
all. Not only liberty in buying and selling is impaired, but 
even liberty of thought/ Few men can afford to take the busi- 
ness risks of being known as opponents of trade unionism (a 
merchant is sometimes boycotted if even his clerks ride on scab 
cars) ; while legislators and others are constrained to surrender 
personal judgment by unionism's minute inquiries as to their 
position regarding its proposals, and by its threat (in the con- 
stitution of some trades councils) to ''always hold itself ready 
to accomplish the political ruin of any public representative who 
may speak or act in a manner detrimental [in its own opinion] 
to the interests of wage workers." This unwillingness to allow 

JThe Quick Outcome of Combination upon which hopes are centered 
is utter suppression of choice. The 70,000 in the longshoremen's union 
include every trade from tug captain to the commonest dock laborer, and 
this union so dominates the lake ports, and many on the ocean and gulf, 
that few dare to be or to hire non-unionists. The possible tyranny of a 
vast collectivism, often exemplified in history, was indicated by the late 
proposal to double the mine workers' million-dollar strike fund. In several 
smaller cities a federal union gathers up the remnant, so that practically 
no man or woman can work at anything without a union card. Chicago 
and San Francisco are similarly unionized by sympathetic support of 
unions in teaming, on which every trade depends. By exclusive agreement 
(p. 236) in teaming, a Chicago monopoly of employers and workers, rais- 
ing prices 40 to 100 per cent, and by strike and boycott mercilessly crushing 
all outsiders, forced many large concerns in 1903, by refusal to haul coal 
for them, to cease using natural gas, and thus increased the use of coal. 
Before hiring a teamster the union is notified; its fees are $15 to join, and 
$1 a month. No citizen may haul his own coal with his own wagon. For 
such hauling an egg dealer was struck by a unionist and killed, and an 
employer of union teamsters, for taking out children in his own wagon 
labor day, was beaten, and his harness was cut to pieces. Similar monopo- 
lies exist in the milk, the baking, and other trades. On each side power 
falls to a bold and bad clique, which extorts and divides large sums by 
preconcerted bidding, and fines an objectionable employer $2,500 at a 
time, or drives him out with ruin. (See full account in McClure's, Sept. 
1903.) To check all this conspiracy the fine of $500 on each of two dozen 
coal dealers, and the few damage suits, are wholly inadequate. By per- 
mitting instead of resenting violence and boycotting, so that one cannot live 
as a non-unionist, the great city is as truly yielding to force as if it paid 
over a levy to a band of brigands, and is tempting all unions toward the 
same goal. 



740 Getting a Liz'ing. 

legislators to think, or to meet them half way in a search for 
the right course, increases demagogy — unscrupulous appeals to 
passion and prejudice — and leads unionism further in its great 
fault of follovv-ing false or unwise friends, and of ignoring the 
able patriots it could easily put into public offices. 

The Forces for Restoring Liberty. Employers, who mainly 
caused the trouble from the beginning by using their power to 
oppress workers and to thwart their just aspirations (and who 
now are the most blamable party for not taking the reasoning 
attitude good judgment shows to be necessary from their side 
first with awakened workers), can now easily, in many cases, 
prevent the appearance or continuance of unionism, or at least 
of its bad features. They can do this, not with stern repression,^ 

^Employers Are Fighting Back againt unionism now with an extent of 
combination that for this purpose was never approached before. A national 
secret anti-boycott society was formed in 1902, to raise a fund for members' 
defense, and the employers' association of Dayton, O., said to be formed to 
*'smash the unions," has local branches in about twenty cities, mostly of less 
than 50,000 people. What hostility to unionism there is in the National 
Metal Trades Association (several hundred employers and a number of 
paid officials) seems justified In the machinists' breaking of a national 
agreement in 1901, and especially in their refusal at several places in 1903 
to arbitrate questionable strikes over reinstatement of foremen and against 
premium systems said to be desired by the men working under them 
(page 100). In the stubborn resistance of the machinists' union to piece 
work the editor of their journal advises a compromise acceptance of it as 
Inevitable. The British machinists thus accepted it long ago, and lately 
have thus accepted premium systems. The National Manufacturers' Asso- 
ciation (about 2,000 members, Mr. Parry, president) is strongly asserting 
with the metal association the rights as to non-unionists etc. conceded by 
New York boiler makers (page 734). In this these associations are pre- 
serving liberty and progress. To yield to unjust demands increases them, 
and may be not greatly better than making them. Employers have been at 
fault here, but for yielding in the extortion of bribes by the walking dele- 
gate they have been under the pressure of contracts, and of profitable 
business not likely to last. 

The Anti-Boycott Society is backing (Sept. 1903) a D anbury hat 
manufacturer's suit in a Connecticut court for damages of $100,000 against 
national officers and 250 local members of the hatters' union, the homes and 
bank accounts of the latter being attached; and the society is backing an- 
other suit of the same person in a federal court, for $240,000, under the 
Sherman anti-trust law, against the same unionists and also the officers of 
the American Federation. The plaintiff claims that because he refused to 



Combination and Liberty. 741 

as now seems to be advocated by Presidents Parry and Kirby 
of the two associations of manufacturers (such a pohcy makes 
unionfsm necessary to avoid subjection), but by the opposite 
poHcy of removing the workers' need for unionism. The things 
necessary for such removal ought generally to be done anyhow. 
A ready hearing by superintendent or employer of workmen's 

discharge non-unionists, though paying union wages, his business was 
nearly ruined by a boycott, which involved not only simple appeal by pub- 
lication in unfair lists, but also threatening and boycotting of dealers selling 
his hats (p. 221). Injunctions are also asked for, to stop the boycott. The 
society is backing at Chicago a number of suits. There is doubtless suffi- 
cient law in all the states, if used vigorously, to stop union boycotting 
and extortion. Alabama has just enacted a stringent law against boy- 
cotting, blacklisting, and picketing. At Toronto publication in a news- 
paper of a notice warning unionists of a strike was lately enjoined. By 
reason of the strike epidemic building is being greatly curtailed (for 
various reasons wages have begun to fall in the steel trade), and united 
employers in many places and trades will largely win in their present 
demand for no limitation of output, and for freedom to hire non-unionists. 
Generally, where these concessions are given by the union, further suppres- 
sion of it will not be attempted. Employers' associations have now a na- 
tional federation, representing a combined capital of a billion dollars. 

Insurance Against Strikes — favored by Mr. Parry's association, suc- 
cessful for several years in Saxony, and to be undertaken by a new Louis- 
ville company — leads to strike prevention by conciliation, since in adjustment 
of losses the reasons for a strike must be investigated. Building trade em- 
ployers in New York and Philadelphia united in 1903 to purge the unions 
of badness as was done in Chicago in 1900, and such action was the main 
business of the last meeting of their National Association. The citizens* 
alliance of Bloomington, 111., is active against excluding non-unionists from 
work and against arbitrating rights. (See its plan in Public Opinion, 
May 28, 1903.) Some of the many such alliances have employment bureaus, 
and some turn from attempted repression of unionism to dealing with it. 
The alliance at Kansas City, said to include 7,000 employers, has in some 
cases, by counter boycott, broken quickly a refusal to deliver material to an 
employer of non-unionists. Union tyranny seems now to justify the forming 
of these defensive alliances, but what is needed is a return, through both 
courage and fair dealing, to that liberty and justice under which very little 
trade combining of any kind is needed. Where combining is met by com- 
bining each side spends itself without gain, as placing all industries In 
trusts, or all countries under tariffs, limits supply and gives everybody 
less. The association that made civilization was displacement of fighting 
with division of labor and with trade. The association of to-day, in trusts 
and unions, is a new form of ancient robbery, and is one of civilization's 
greatest dangers. 



742 Getting a Living. 

complaints, acquaintance with and accessibility to them, frank 
discussion of all reasons for or against raising pay, and scrupu- 
lous justice in discharge and promotion, without thought of 
using power unfairly by retaliating on a man leading in a 
complaint having any basis in reason, — these will remove the 
workers' need for the walking delegate, and for a strong union 
kept ready for the fray. Why cannot a plane be reached ( it has 
been in many cases) without a union, on which the employer 
and his own men collectively can have the honest conference 
and mutual truth telling which Mr. Mitchell says will prevent 
any strike, and can maintain the human relationship far more 
healthfully for both sides than under unionism? In the same 
line are the right kind of welfare institutions, talked over with 
and largely managed by the workers, and in some cases partly 
supported by them, but with the maximum of freedom to par- 
ticipate or not.^ For many years without a strike the Midvale 
steel company at Philadelphia has promoted peace and progress 
for itself and its men by encouraging personal ambition — train- 
ing up apprentices to recruit its force, and having a premium 
system by which many of its men are said to reach an efficiency 
yielding each in wages $40 a week. This company and the 

^The Highest Sagacity of the Employer has been identified with use 
of best appliances and best methods, but none the less does it include the 
best care of his human machinery. A lady employed as social secretary 
by the McCormick harvester company at Chicago, studying deeply the 
conditions, improved them so substantially, and with such increase of the 
workers' good will and efficiency as perhaps largely to over-balance the 
cost, that in a strike the employees of the Deering company demanded and 
secured, among other things, the same welfare system for themselves. 
(Rev. of Rev, July, 1903.) Unionists will not oppose proper welfare 
institutions when clearly the employer tries to be fair, and has no desire 
to make them dependent and then take advantage of them. Nearly any 
employer, with gain to himself, can give safe quarters, just hours and 
wages, and general treatment that will be received as right. The cash 
register company at Dayton (with nearly 4,000 employees and 24 unions), 
having accepted unionism in settlement of the strike of 1901, has an expert 
who, with a committee from the management, hears complaints, seeks to 
render exact justice, and induces the men to be active in the union and make 
it intelligent and just. (See Engineering Magazine for April znd Alunsey's 
for June, 1903.) Would opposition to the effect of such a policy to reduce 
unionism's importance be less blamable than that attitude of militarism 
which makes the war it prepares for? 



Combination and Liberty. 743 

immensely successful Baldwin locomotive concern, whose close 
relations with employees are due somewdiat to its being a part- 
nership of men that rose from the ranks of its own workers,, 
have avoided all trouble from unionism and strikes — not by 
suppression of unionism, it seems, but by making it a super- 
fluous burden. In the recent spread of unionism the workers 
in some factories have refused to embrace it because of unwill- 
ingness to unite against an employer considerate and just.* 
To have this justice in an employer, and in the workers a capa- 
bility that precludes anything else, is the ''rational industrial 
method" looked forward to. 

In Ideal Conditions of Society there would be the minimum 
of the individual helplessness that drove Utah people into 
cooperation (page 91), and that drives workers into unionism. 
It is well to get good in these ways, but where practicable it is 
a great deal better to get it without the sinking of individuality 
into the mass, especially when this involves a struggle of class- 
es. Class consciousness is to be desired where needed for 
removal of wrongs, but far better is its absence by reason of 
easy passage and friendly association up the industrial scale, as 
was the general rule in America not long ago. To a large 
extent this can be made the rule again.- Avoidance of that 

^Individual Ambition. The Baldwin firm trains up its own men, and 
so gains by promoting their ambition and their earning that no contest 
arises over division of product. President Fry of the glass combination 
told the Industrial Commission of a Rochester concern that prospered 
greatly by encouraging individual ambition, and graduated more men of 
success than any other concern in the glass trade. (See his testimony in 
Vol. VII., and that of President Harrah, of the Midvale company, in Vol. 
XIV.) As was discussed in the chapter on learning a trade, encourage- 
ment of individual ambition will soon put an employer and his men, and 
the society they serve, far ahead of competitors whose resources and in- 
dividuality are taxed by unionism. The difference is similar to that 
betAveen industry in America and industry in Germany, where each of a 
million workers carries a soldier or official on his back. The employer 
who is good to his men in that right way upheld by ethics and economics 
alike is not weakened but is strengthened against competitors (page 114). 

2Not Trade Militarism. Herman Justi's plan of making strikes obso- 
lete, by having employers in each trade organize compactly and maintain 
a labor department, is to secure peace by Europe's system of self-consuming 
armament by nations. The same is partly involved in W. H. Sayward's 
plan of avoiding outside conciliation or arbitration by having a joint com- 



744 Getting a Living, 

curse of older countries, division into hostile classes, is practi- 
cable here, with our mixed population and sensible education, 
separated from aristocratic traditions, and can be made another 

mittee to stop disputes at the start. The desire of some employers — of 
many in England — to have trade unions, for the sake of discussion, mutual 
respect, and completeness of agreement, arises because without a union the 
discord would be worse. But the best way of all is to go so far back in 
preventing trouble that neither joint committees nor union will be worth sup- 
porting. If in the future, as Prof. J. B. Clark predicts, great unions of 
capital and great unions of labor will secure justice for each side, society 
will inevitably lose its liberty. There will be a lamentable failure to use 
the light we have, a base betrayal by this generation of its trust for pos- 
terity, if a cast iron system is again to be settled for centuries on society, 
merely from lack in employers of willingness to deal justly, and from lack 
in the public of the courage to frown on boycotting and undue ostracism. 

For Securing the Good Will of personal contact the Coal Strike Com- 
mission said the efficient medium is the union, raised to its best by recog- 
nition, and not driven to extremes by refusal (with intention to destroy it) 
of the stockholders' chosen manager to meet the union official chosen with 
equal right by employees to represent them. But the commission also said 
that disputes should first be considered by the employer or manager with a 
committee of his own men (would not such closer contact and its good will 
make this consideration sufficient?), and that its (the commission's) best 
work would be to evoke mutual agreement to displace the existing antag- 
onism. Is not the good will greatest, and safest too for men with some 
self-reliant ability to move, when it Is trusted by not arming in unionism? 
Most employers have never had or deserved a strike. 

Not Trade Blue Laws. In the Chicago joint agreement of the masonry 
trade the many rules, with fines up to $200 on offending workers or em- 
ployers, will eventually be bad in results, like the Connecticut blue laws, 
and like a union's fines on its members. As the existence of morality re- 
quires voluntary abstaining from acts not directly punished, so efficiency 
and liberty spring from individual exercise of a general competency that 
makes Impracticable the acts covered by these fines. Unionism is vastly 
better than the previous stages of slavery, serfdom, and subsistence pay, 
but that It Is not the goal of men created just a little lower than the angels 
is indicated by its tendency to become only another kind of bondage. Real 
independence will come from nothing less than the worker's own Individual 
doing and being. As militarism desires to make men machines for working 
and fighting, so unionism, whose officers naturally become partisans of the 
cause and incapable of judging it, desires to make men cogs in Its wheel, 
and to stereotype that mediocrity that will hold the largest number. 

All the Plagues written In C. H. Pearson's "National Life and Charac- 
ter," and in E. A. Ross's "Social Control," are brought upon older societies 
by permitting people to give up rising in wealth and efficiency by self- 



Combination and Liberty. 745 

example of Inestimable value to humanity. By reasonable 
recognition from the employer, unions will be turned from 
fighting him to cooperating with him, as in the case of the 
locomotive engineers, without monopolistic restriction of ap- 
prenticeship, and with liberty to join the union or not (pages 
297, 327). As, from justice and merit on both sides, collective 
bargaining power sinks in importance, unions will become more 
similar to scientific and professional societies, ready to act if 
economic rights be endangered, but occupied chiefly with pro- 
moting efficiency and trade progress. 

By Increase of Education, especially in manual training and 
industry, and by the employer's encouragement of efficiency, 
there will be a great increase of that splendid class who know 
and reach the whole field, getting work anywhere on merit, 
doing most for others by doing most for themselves, having 
no desire to gain by holding others back, and making in indus- 
try a democracy that is sound to remotest effects. The large 
field in which unionism and its coercion cannot now be perma- 
nent — the small towns in which, from lack of grievances and 
from easy access to farm work, men soon weary of paying dues 
and attending meetings, and where in much of the work union- 
ism makes conditions worse by hardening the employer's deal- 
ing and shutting out the weak — this field will be enlarged by 
the addition of many hives of industry, in which employer and 

reliantly earning their way, and to turn to the preying of one class upon 
another by raising price through scarcity, by holding back the efficient, 
and by enfeebling all. The methods of the latter course include a brood 
of protections, in tariffs, labor guilds, restrictive laws, and socialism. It 
is the branding of healthy individual ambition as greed over competitors, 
instead of promoting it as good service to customers, that has so largely 
stratified the British working class, making them several times worse in 
drunkenness and gambling than American workers, whose door of indi- 
vidual h pe unionism has not so nearly closed. From this decay of enter- 
prise comes largely, no doubt, the present decrease of births, and will come 
a lessening of healthy power in outward trade; from both these come the 
yielding of the higher to the lower races. It seems true to say that before 
America, in the matter of trade combination and labor laws, is set this day 
blessing and cursing, for herself and all mankind; that she must now 
choose whether, in cowardly yielding to the retrogressive spirit of boy- 
cotting and lynching, she will grant the demanded fettering of sound 
individuality, or whether, by developing it, she will preserve and increase 
for posterity the liberty that made the nineteenth century glorious. 



74^ Getting a Living. 

worker are united by aiding one another's efficiency and prog- 
ress, and by absence on each side of either opportunity or 
desire to render less than a full return.^ Under such conditions 
individual wage bargaining will come much nearer to securing 
perfect results for all than will collective. Individual wage 
bargaining now is very far from being helter-skelter ; over but 
little of the field does unionism, in the absence of unjust exclu- 
sion, secure wage increases not individually obtainable unless 
the labor's output is increased nearly as much. To the extent it 
is true (small in America) that wages in unionized trades are 
rising, but in other trades are stationary or falling, the rise 
is no more an effect of unionism than a cause, making wind 
for its sails. The same is true of the comparison between 
states having few unions and those having many. Unions do 
not prove their prowess on industries not naturally affording 
higher pay. 

A Proper Degree of the Union Spirit. Together with read- 
iness to get the most by going individually from one employer 
to another, the union spirit, ready at least for temporary con- 
certed action (37 per cent of strikes, 1880 to 1900, were not 
declared by unions), will still be at hand to do a needed work, 
such as unionism's taking within twelve years of from three to 
six hours from the long day of street car men in many cities, 
with increase of wages besides (page 134) ; but, owing to 
clearer judgment and more courage in public opinion (the 
courage that brooks no boycott), unionism will not have such 
power (in its eleventh commandment against taking another's 
job) as to exploit consumers and excluded workers by raising 
pay in one city much higher than that for the same work in 
a neighboring city, as is now done in building trades.^ These 

^The phrase "a free city" might now be used with some of the good 
meaning it had in Germany six centuries ago. Possibly, by Mr. CunniflF's 
description {World's Work, Nov. 1902), New Britain may be to some 
extent a city of this kind, with wealth naturally and healthfully diffused, 
as compared with Danbury, which he portrays as bound by close union- 
izing into a tight web of coercion. 

^EcLualizing Conditions. High pay for coal mining in one state may 
rightly be protected by inducing miners in other states to demand all that 
their labor market will yield, but they may not artificially raise that sum 
by monopolistic exclusion of local farm hands and Negroes — by fencing off 



Combination and Liberty. 747 

forces of education and inspiration, together with increase of 
justice and foresight among employers, will make untrue and 
remove the workers' realization (too true in many cases hereto- 

the good work and leaving the excluded to the mercy of the iron law of 
wages. All must rise together, and localities must remain different from 
one another in labor, as in natural resources. The effort, in unionism and 
arbitration, to make labor conditions equal, leaving competition to manage- 
ment (pp. 565, 597), soon involves the prison labor and protective tariff 
fallacies. The highest cost for needed supply will still make the price, which 
by those producing cheapest will not be cut further than is necessary to carry 
off all their product. Artificiality, whether in equalizing or differentiating, 
involves exploitation somewhere, and cannot last when people emerge from 
the maze of trade protection. The centralization of employers now desired 
by soft coal miners, for limiting output and keeping up prices, was desired 
by the anthracite miners thirty years ago; but when it came it made con- 
ditions far worse for the miners and consumers, and even for many of the 
capitalists, after their buying of mines at high prices to form a monopoly. 
{Labor Bulletin No. 13, p. 774.) On the claim that paying cheap men 
what they are worth is unfair competition, unionism tried in San Francisco 
in 1901 to force the coarsest restaurants to pay as much as the finest. But 
it is thus that the unfairness comes, as under the effect of one uniform 
price for hair-cutting to turn to the fine barber shops those who seek value 
when they buy. Not much pressure is needed to induce men who can do 
work to charge enough for it. Healthy progress comes from use of one's 
own resources, without attack on competitors. Among people of any 
capability guerrilla competition, a bogy in Australia, injures most those 
who resort to it. A price-cutting merchant is feared less by competitors 
than by customers. 

Though a Few Laws are Desirable as to Sunday work and factory, 
hours (p. 444), Prof. Ely's doctrine of the twentieth man is only partially 
true, and becomes less true if men's morality and self-reliance are depended 
on without laws. Letting people know that he closes on Sunday, but that 
he keeps open during the week with a stock to be proud of, is the policy 
of a Jackson confectioner having double the trade of any Sunday-opening 
competitor. His is a case for sound use of the consumers' league principle. 
Bank and insurance laws are admirable in results, and a few laws may be 
needed against adulteration of goods; but care must be taken to know that 
the consumer wants the knowledge he is said to have a right to, and that 
the law is not sought for exploiting him with monopoly, as in the case of 
oleomargarine (pp. 509, 530). "Having a moral sense in a community 
to do a thing is ten thousand times better than law" (Bishop Potter). The 
surest basis for that moral sense is to give the people, by leaving them to 
self-dependence as well as by education, a capability under which fair 
dealing is the only kind that pays. And the reasons against having laws 
in these matters apply largely against having unions. 



748 Getting a Living. 

fore) that ''their only hope for safety and protection, now or 
in the future, hes in their association with their fellows" (Gom- 
pers). There will not then be a misdirection of energy in a 
craze for unionism, which indeed rescues people, but leaves 

A Gain Too Large. Ethelbert Stewart {American Federationist, Sept. 
1902), in his formidable superstructure of good resting on the slender and 
unargued foundation "as a result of our union" — does not notice that a 
non-unionist, instead of dishonorably taking benefits without sharing the 
cost, might rightly deem it a disadvantage to have a rate that by natural 
demand and free movement would have stood at $3, raised to $4 with the 
accompaniments of loss of peace and liberty, of faster work or being 
crowded out, and of material reduction in the year's employment. More- 
over, it might be against unionism, and reveal union exploitation of ex- 
cluded workers and the public, to point out a difference of pay very large 
(union pay in nine New Jersey trades in 1899 exceeded that of non-union- 
ists by 41 per cent) if much power was required to prevent the employer 
from hiring cheaper men. Local wage conditions have made the pay of 
West Virginia miners but half the rate in Illinois, where the highest 
workers are protected by a state license and by the union's three ten-dollar 
initiation fees. (Indus. Com. XV. 410.) It is where unionists at their 
high pay are really preferable, by reason of superior efficiency, that such 
pay is just. (Pages 152, 288.) As perfect unionism's good results in pro- 
moting progress (page 298) are not to be secured from minimum wage 
laws (page 343), so the same results come with much more wholesomeness 
without unionism's forcing where, as always in progressive American farm- 
ing districts, there is no helplessness to be sweated, and no leaning — indi- 
vidual resourcefulness and ambition leading both employer and worker to 
highest progress. Success here in wage bargaining by one raises pay for 
others better than does unionism, since the former reveals a natural (not 
artificial) strength in the labor market which one alone can utilize. 

We Must Earnestly Protest against the idea that "the era of individual 
bargaining has passed away in transportation, and is very nearly a thing 
of the past in all large scale production" (Ely). This idea, it seems, will 
bring, in combination and in labor laws, Herbert Spencer's "coming slav- 
ery," which may easily be avoided by exercising a self-reliant courage that 
will even win employers' favor. The largest corporations gladly pay, not 
only enough for efficiency, but for good men market wages raised high by 
readiness to seek the best jobs. Neither suppression nor regulation of 
organization should be the watchword, but a capability and a fairness 
that make it superfluous. The latter qualities can easily be developed 
by setting men's minds upon them, and the strife of classes can be avoided 
that Macaulay predicted in 1858. "Our greatest danger, the class strug- 
gle" (Brooks), can scarcely be avoided except by having no sharply defined 
classes. It will be easier to cooperate with employees under the natural 
friendliness of mutual interest than under suspicion cultivated by agitation. 



Combination and Liberty. 749 

most of them in their individual helplessness, and tends even to 
increase it, besides tending to exploit all outsiders. Except 
where other means are inadequate for avoiding subjection, a net 
result of evil for all flows from unionism's cultivation of dis- 
trust^ toward the employer — from its antagonism to any 'Verti- 
cal cleavage which breaks the solidarity of labor against capi- 
tal." Friendly attachment to the employer is usually to be pre- 
ferred, rather than watching to overmatch him. Dr. Bradford 
says the root of society's troubles is skepticism of the brother- 
hood there is apart from organization. When, because of em- 
ployers' reasonableness, of workers' proved desirableness, of 
their readiness to act together temporarily, and of their ability 
to go and come, they are not in danger of victimization but are 
fully as independent as the employer, — under these conditions, 
existing now in many cases, a force of men can express desires 
more truly and healthfully through a committee from them- 

E. D. Durand, approving more organizing, says it will give "peace that re- 
sults chiefly from dread of conflict rather than from brotherly love." 

"To Maintain That Fellow Feeling in the workshop which we as 
trade unionists stand for" (G. N. Barnes), to avoid "cultivation of man's 
selfishness and loss of desire to cooperate with his fellow shopmates" 
(J. O'Connell) (see Civ. Fed. Rep. 1903) — in this unionism passes easily 
into socialism, and seeks brotherhood by purposely making people more 
helpless (p. 91). Under piece work men do not slip in and work before 
the hour when, by agreement that such conduct is greedy, men's morality in 
the matter is given existence by exercise and test, and is not destroyed by 
absence of chance to do wrong (pp. 95, 260). Employers fitted to succeed 
with workers not helpless are not, as was charged in connection with the 
two quotations above, or will not be if not resisted unreasonably, so short- 
sighted as to hope by piece or premium work to get extra product 
not justly paid for. The same socialistic desire of saving people from 
doing by withholding power to do appears in a leading national union's 
"law" that imposes a fine of $25, or suspension, for engaging in "speed, 
record, or other contests." If society' is worthy of its gifts it will not, as 
socialism demands (see Ely's "Social Reform"), abolish corporations for 
fear they will control the votes of employees and legislators, and the teach- 
ing by professors; will not abolish private property because trusts and 
unions raise prices and rob the public by making goods scarce; will not 
emasculate people to keep them from temptation. It will have powerful 
corporations, and systems for drawing out greatest effort in working and 
earning, while the people will have, not the cowering helplessness that 
invites exploitation, but the sound sense and morality that will hold these 
great forces to just and faithful service for all. 



750 Getting a Living. 

selves than through a unionism by which policies are to a large 
extent forced on them by class appeals, to their own and so- 
ciety's loss. The old time pride and joy in work are prevented, 
its irksomeness is increased, and its quality is lowered. 

The Forging of Chains, which in union and trust combina- 
tion has been going on of late quite ominously, is fortunately 
to receive in one direction an unexpected check. This check 
is in unionism's jealous guarding of the right to strike, which 
guarding, with the better organizing of the weak unskilled who 
lean toward socialistic law, is adding unionism more fully to the 
barriers against socialism. As far-seeing unionists fear com- 
pulsory arbitration (a bill for that purpose in the New York 
legislature was dropped in 1903 after arguments against it by 
Mr. Gompers), so they are now increasingly fearing govern- 
ment control or ownership. Though labor federations watch 
legislation to oppose unfavorable bills, there being at Albany a 
labor lobby of a half dozen or more paid men, urge all kinds of 
bills for having the state do its own work and pay above market 
wages, and urge wage and hour clauses for franchises and 
public contractors, — though this is true, it was mainly unskilled 
socialistic unionists who in a very short run broke down lately 
in governing the London suburb of West Ham, driving indus- 
try away with a burden of unjust favors to workers, and who 
in 1902 were prevented by majorities not large in the Massa- 
chusetts legislature from exposing to demoralization the labor- 
ers of that state with public work for the unemployed in a time 
of unexampled prosperity. The abler unionists hesitate over 
the appearance now in this country (from Continental Europe) 
of compulsory arbitration clauses in municipal franchises 
(Seattle's charter was upheld requiring such a clause unless the 
people vote otherwise, and there is such a clause in the New 
York subway contract), and do not want Congress to estabHsh 
compulsory arbitration in railway service, or to go far in limit- 
ing the railway wage contract. Compulsory arbitration would 
be constitutional in railway service and in municipal franchises, 
though doubtless not in the charters of corporations engaged 
in business on which the public is less dependent. 

Compulsion Must Work Both Ways. Trade unionists, who 
earnestly opposed a railway compulsory arbitration bill in 
Canada in 1902, perceive that the state's common practice of 



Combination and Liberty. 751 

favoring its employees by taxing all others would soon, if its 
industrial control and ownership were extensive, become so 
demoralizing to its workers, so wasteful, and so inviting to 
others to engage in similar corruption, that to avert a break- 
down the state would have to turn and harden its policy toward 
its employees. Not only is it too subversive of discipline, and 
of the state's dignity, for its employees to preconcertedly strike,^ 

^The Rules of the Union vs. the Law of the Nation. The fact stated 
above, long known in England and Germany, was learned in 1903 in Aus- 
tralia, in the realization that the strike of state railway engineers (page 
341) was practically a revolt against the government. The same fact 
(appearing too in the recent refusal of Erie's mayor to take back policemen 
resigning in a body to enforce a demand for increased pay) has just been 
realized by American unionism also, as shown in the decision of the book- 
binders' union to break its rules, and not strike, at President Roosevelt's 
reinstatement of an assistant foreman whom, because of his expulsion by 
the union, the public printer had discharged as if the union's rules were of 
course to prevail. Instead of striking, to force the government, the union 
has made charges against the man for his removal according to the civil 
service laws. One of the charges is that he required men to do more work 
per day than the limit set by the union (from the same office unionism 
has kept type-setting machines, used universally for six years), and he says 
another objection is that he told two Congressmen how labor and expense 
in the office might be saved (page 414). The President said there is no 
objection to government employees "constituting themselves into a body if 
they so desire, but no rules or resolutions of that union can be permitted 
to override the laws of the United States, which it is my sworn duty to 
enforce." Another good result of the aif air is that every government depart- 
ment must be made an open shop — open to men against whom the only ob- 
jection is that they are not unionists. The President, citing with approval 
the coal strike commission's award forbidding discrimination for or 
against either unionists or non-unionists, said "it is of course mere elemen- 
tary decency to require that all the government departments shall be 
handled in accordance with the principle thus clearly and fearlessly 
enunciated for private industry." (Public Opinion, July 30, 1903.) 

Unconstitutional Discrimination. As shown in Chapter XIX., the 
exclusion of men heretofore, from government printing, for mere non- 
unionism, or their having to join the union to get a position, is clearly 
unconstitutional, though where unionism is strong non-unionists will not be 
appointed by Congressmen. Unionism, where just, does not need to be 
subsidized or enforced by law, nor does it need much ostracism for gaining 
members. The good reason for not working with non-unionists (page 202) 
does not apply to work for the government, because it will not try to cut 
do\yn pay unjustly. It is well we have a President who stops at one point 
unionism's encroachment on law and liberty, and who does so with such 



752 Getting a Living. 

but it is similarly demoralizing for them to hire themselves with 
other people's money by cowing with their political influence 
the officials who are supposed to perform the functions of the 
employer. In the defeat in 1902 of Congressman Loud of 
California, by certain organized and clamorous postal em- 
ployees, apparently because he attended to the government's 
business as he would have attended to his own, the danger here 
came to view (page 413), as it had shortly before when in New 
York city, to evade a law against legislative intrigue by public 
employees, a section of them met, not as firemen but as * 'Ameri- 
can citizens," a term which, like liberty, has been used to cover 
a multitude of wrong intentions.^ In New York state, as in 

cogency of reason that the union is benefited by being kept in right paths, 
and public opinion is rallied as it would be everywhere in its quaking 
before boycotting if a few had the President's courage to take a stand 
against tyranny. A protest, calling his action unfriendly to unionism, 
was sent by the Washington trades council to all such councils, asking them 
to petition for reversal ; but his position is so clearly impregnable that the 
episode will doubtless pass without a suicidal attempt to array unionism 
against the President politically. The charges against the foreman include 
alleged immorality thirty years ago (p. 296), but the real objection seems 
to be acts like those stated above. It is believed that cost of government 
printing (4,000 employees) is excessive, because of union restriction, and 
that the new $2,000,000 building will be too small without the machinery 
the union excludes. Congress may investigate. Yet the Federation, after denial 
of its petition, did no wrong in declaring for closed private shops (p. 202). 

The Typographical Union's Oath, as pointed out (Sept. 1903) by 
Catholic clergymen refusing to confess union printers, contains these 
words: "My fidelity to the union shall in no sense be interfered with by 
any allegiance that I may now or hereafter owe to any other organization, 
social, political, or religious." Though in the courageous thoroughness 
with which he performs duty the President required the government print- 
ing office employees to take the oath of allegiance to the nation, the 
word political in the union oath must have been meant to refer to parties, 
not to the state, which compels obedience. That treason was not meant is 
asserted by an ex-president of the union, who says the oath will be changed. 
But it indicates over-reaching effort to exalt the union, as appears in the 
matter of the militia (p. 240), and the result in both cases is deserved 
odium. By highest moral tests, apart from contracts with a return con- 
sideration, the reason cannot abdicate for a day, and a promise binding 
future belief is immoral and utterly void — keeping it being worse than 
breaking it. Apart from state compulsion the degree of one's fidelity to 
anything must continually be subject to one's own reason and conscience. 

^Disfranchisement for Public Employees. In Great Britain it is being 



Combination and Liberty. 753 

England, there are many unions composed of men in public 
work. The fireman whose discharge was upheld by the court 
was mistaken in supposing that with the right of free speech 
he could criticise and work against officers in control. Hence, 

learned that continuance of the promising movement in municipal ownership 
of public services (very successful in Glasgow, Manchester, and other 
cities) may involve partial disfranchisement of city employees, as was 
found necessary in cooperative societies (page 82). Where officials who 
select employees are themselves voted for or against by the latter, or are 
appointed by elected men, there is a condition of unstable equilibrium. The 
hope of many is that this test will eventually be met by growth of public 
intelligence and morality; but, aside from weakening individuality, must 
there not be too much disfranchisement — or too much temptation for em- 
ployees, and too great an unpaid for and unthanked for burden on the 
public in watching them — to admit of public ownership's ever becoming 
extensive? Moreover, since democracy does not do things well, having a 
self-complacent contempt for wisdom, and since increase of intelligence is 
kept up with by increase of societal complexity and difficulty of government, 
does not the success of democracy, in its main function of developing men, 
depend on its being confined to a field so narrow as to admit of success 
without much wisdom? England's unequalled success in government is 
due to the keeping of the ablest men in off.ce (each having great power), 
by the influence of aristocratic conservatism over democracy; and increase 
of government ownership, to be successful, requires increased yielding by 
democracy to that wisdom which is never to be possessed by more than a 
few. Hence, is it not true now, and to be true always, that a government 
which does many things cannot be a government by the people? The 
splendid success of private corporations is due to their placing of great 
power and resources in the hands of a few able officials, usually chosen 
by a few large stockholders. Socialism's best chance is under a central 
rule one locality cannot affect. Australasia has far less local self-govern- 
ment than America. See in Rev. of Rei\, Oct. 1903, a portrayal of the 
evils of Australia's working class rule, especially in curtailment of liberty. 
Victoria's premier, since the railway strikes, has proposed a bill for de- 
priving government employees of the ordinary suffrage, but allowing them 
as a class to choose two members of parliament. Their voting and boycott- 
ing power has now, in coercion of legislators, much of the same effect that 
followed the parading of the Prstorian Guard before the Roman Senate. 
To a Worker Owning as a Citizen One-Millionth of a public indus- 
try, as is mainly the case with a worker owning a few shares in a coopera- 
tive factory (page 117), his feeling toward the capital he works with is no 
more socialism's hoped for feeling of "our tools" than is his feeling toward 
the machinery of the private employer; but on the contrary, there comes to 
him the destructive notion of having some right to rob the concern in pay 
too high or work too poor. Instead of regarding, with Mr. Hobson, the 
48 



754 Getting a Living. 

Mr. Baer's Divine Right of Private Ownership, though 
it answers well to declaim against, is found after all to have a 

present uncertainty of employment as "evoking gross selfishness as necessary 
to survive" (the opposite is true, since selfishness leads to dishonesty and 
deprives one of work or customers), and instead of hoping for a decline of 
selfishness under socialism, we must infer, from present municipal cor- 
ruption, that with increase of public ownership would come a formidable 
increase of those seeking direct gain in cash by serving officials and bosses 
for jobs and contracts, until they overshadowed the now often discomfited 
and usually unpopular class of those seeking only the indirect and in- 
dividually small benefit of justice for all. That degree of regard for the 
public which is required for a democracy's control of a large bureaucracy 
(the Czar, with all his power, is unable to control his) is rewarded with 
individual benefits so remote, is so resented by officers and their connection, 
and is appreciated by so few, as to be unwholesome for all concerned. On 
the other hand, for the official class, as Mr. Hobson says is necessary, to 
have such deep sympathy for the people as to make their real welfare its 
first object, is impossible where the official class is large, and would in- 
volve doing too much for people to be good for them. But there Is little 
attempt to thrust good government on people now. Even locally elected 
officials plunder American cities before the eyes of the most energetic 
people In the world. Policemen, secure in the favor of a boss or clique, 
are free to disregard the rights of citizens, and often do so; and where 
such conditions do not exist, the common readiness to flatter policemen 
and "fire laddies," though they be deserving, rests largely on fear not to 
have their favor. To report a railway monopoly's agent would be far safer. 
Better Performance of Political Duties will come, it is said, with 
socialism, or with extension of public ownership, because one's welfare 
will then be so dependent on government that he will not dare to be in- 
active. This is another case of wishing for an earthquake that we might 
be joined in brotherhood as a family. The only reasons why state em- 
ployees, then a formidable multitude, should give up their present readi- 
ness to impose on the public would be consldeiatlcn for the latter's help- 
lessness or fear of a break-down. They would not permit such a man as 
Washington to be elected unless they were sobered by something like 
imminent invasion, but would prefer the corruption bounty of their friend, 
the boss. The youth's feeling that he can do anything, and needs no 
advice, is necessary to lead him Into achievement, but he and his fellows 
are not given control of afi^alrs. Democracy's self-confidence Is likewise 
necessary to develop men, but it will never be able to carry on many gov- 
ernment Industries. To secure for a government highest dignity, and 
greatest attachment from citizens (see Ely's "Social Reform"), it must take 
functions clearly its own — must not farm out the taxes as France did before 
1789, nor have privately owned water works — but still Its problem is not 
a simple one of the more the better. As in the parent's aiding of his child. 



Combination and Liberty. 755 

basis disconcertingly sound, as is the case with the divine right 
of kings, which of course is a true doctrine in Russia and other 
lands where a free government is above the capacity of the 
people. As socialism, to keep the people from starving, would 
have to rule the individual practically as a slave, so in the 
freest government's control or ownership of industry the 
tendency is for success to require that the worker be held to 
obedience as a soldier. Perceiving these things, the American 
railway worker and his employer, by being fair to one another, 
will not injure the public very far in strikes, and hence will 
avert having railway service placed under a kind of military 
rule, as Italy placed it several years ago ; or having it put under 
close restriction as to striking and arbitration, as it was put in 
Holland and Victoria in 1903, and as was recommended by the 
Chicago strike commission of 1894.^ Since Prussian state 
railway men are discharged for socialistic agitation, and since 
the state there is a harder master with its miners than are pri- 
vate owners (but it is a success, not being ruled by its em- 
ployees), American unionists of foresight did not join in the 
cry in 1902 for state or national ownership or control of the 
anthracite coal industry.^ Those Montana strikers who in 

the government's problem is to do just enough, and by human nature it 
seems that can never be very much. 

^The New York arbitration board recommended in 1894 that by the state 
railway work be declared a public service, that its employment be under 
time contracts, with oath of fidelity and long notice of termination, and 
that combining to obstruct it be made unlawful. These and other minute 
restrictions proposed would be constitutional if necessary, but would be 
a deplorable movement away from liberty toward the stereotyped system 
of a German bureaucracy. The U. S. Industrial Commission (XIX. 790) 
recommended in 1901 that Congress fix hours and enact a code for all con- 
ditions of railway labor, though it did not specifically recommend anything 
radical like compulsory arbitration. But such means for preventing rail- 
way strikes were proposed in 1903 by the Canadian commission that inves- 
tigated the late strike in British Columbia. 

2 The Public Will be in No Danger of Suffering for Coal by reason of 
an obstinate strike (but will get a better and cheaper supply than the state 
can furnish unless it taxes some to help others) if harmful monopoly is 
prevented by admission of foreign coal, by adequate state control of rail- 
ways and other corporations, and by strict suppression of union violence. 
Some persons then will be glad to do the mining and furnish a supply for 
the rising price, and loss of trade will soon bring the contestants to terms. 



756 Getting a Living. 

1894 petitioned a court (some suggested in 1902 receivership 
for the coal companies) to compel a railway company to obey 
its charter requirement of continuous service, alleging that the 
pay demanded was just, did not realize, as unionists do now, 
that such forcing of the company involves forcing the men 
(page 387). 

The Wage System Will Last as Long as Liberty. This is 
an assertion of M. Levasseur that cannot be gainsaid. And 
with the wage system will continue the payment of rent, inter- 
est, and profits. All of these are included in the right to buy 
and sell, to employ and be employed, and to decide for one's 
self. Without free exercise of these rights in private owner- 
ship, liberty could not exist, nor could there be efficiency in 
character or in production ; and from the worm of decay our 
proud civilization would in due time return to the dust of 
barbarism from whence it came. Moreover, by the wage 
system is meant the payment of wages held strictly to supply 
and demand values, and based on justice from the laborer as 
well as toward him. If private ownership and liberty passed 
away, society's decay would be slow or swift according as the 
market values of the present wage system were or were not 
adhered to. 

And Industry Will Remain Autocratic, to the extent that 
the buyer's or seller's right to decide whether or not to contract 
must, if liberty is to exist, be always as truly absolute as was the 
power of Ivan the Terrible. The state can prohibit the hiring 
of children, or of men for more than eight hours a day in mines, 
but it can never restrict choicfe among lawful things, nor can it 
ever do very much prohibiting without weakening its people. 
One must have a freedom unaided and unfettered, and a wide 
range of choice, to reach and exercise the potency of character 

In the same way can be avoided compulsory arbitration for any monopoly 
trusts producing necessaries, which can starve out workers and by raising 
price recoup the loss, or for a labor trust enforcing a demand by with- 
holding supplies from the public. Risk of waste and corruption in state 
ownership of mines, and loss of liberty, greatly outweigh now the risk that 
a Lord Penrhyn will deprive the public of a scarce mineral by incurring 
the loss of closing against a just wage demand (his Welsh strike has been 
on three years), or that he will incur the loss of long oppressing workers 
if mine laws are enforced. 



Combination and Liberty. 757 

required for saying with Henley, "I am the master of my fate." 
The idea of some, that the employer of to-day is a century 
hence to be a manager hired by the workers he superintends, 
will then be more practicable than at present only so far as then 
the worker as owner will be more able to hire himself as em- 
ployee with the same strictness of dealing that is now followed 
by the capitalist employer (page 86). The hope of some, that 
the trade union, perhaps soon, is to be an employing owner, will 
be realized only so far as it approaches the present corporation, 
and exacts from its member workers a full return at supply and 
demand values. Its charity will have to be kept separate. The 
custom in France of assisting trade unions to take public con- 
tracts, the bonds being waived or lowered, and contracts being 
divided, is beneficial only so far as it trains workers to do 
without the assistance, which amounts to a money gift, and to 
become capitalist employers. Otherwise it enfeebles them by 
leading them to depend on a collectivism that is being left fur- 
ther behind as society rises above its childhood in the tribal 
stage. The girls of the large store who are permitted (subject 
to seldom exercised veto) to amend rules, and even to vote 
refunding of fines and reinstatement of persons discharged, 
may thus be raised in efficiency and good will, and may feel that 
for them industry is at last democratic ; but it remains auto- 
cratic as before, in that they cannot choose (without injuring 
all and losing their privilege) to make their decisions other than 
a wise employer would make them himself. The decision is 
only an interpretation for the case of nature's unalterable laws ; 
the employer himself has no choice without penalty. The only 
way in which industry is to resemble politics and religion in 
becoming more democratic is in the fact that the worker will 
use in bargaining his greater knowledge for combining and 
moving, as he will choose what to believe and which way to 
vote. In his influence and chance of individual success, indus- 
try seems no less democratic than politics now. Not greatly 
could it be further democratized by unanimous action of all 
workers and employers together. Increase of need for and 
difficulty of the employer's management makes it unlikely that 
its importance and reward will be noticeably lessened by spread 
of intelligence.^ 

^Hopes That Will Be Blasted. Public opinion will never, as advocated 



758 Getting a Living. 

Will Any Lapse of Time Change Conditions? After the 
passing of the five centuries which Rodbertus, agreed with by 
Professor Smart, thought wih be necessary for sociaUzing in- 
dustry — the ''many weary centuries" suggested by Professor 
Sehgman as the time for continuance of the present wage sys- 
tem, — after this the only way by which democracy can become 
(as Mr. Webb hopes) equal to the task of conducting public 
industry will be a strict holding of every one to the earning of 
his pay. Society, whatever its wealth, cannot do otherwise 
without sowing thereby the seeds of disintegration. In view 
of the continuance unchanged for five thousand years of human 

in 1886 by a noted American authority on the labor question (see Levasseur, 
260), require the successful employer to share with his men his profits 
above the average rate. Society will not thus lower the reward that in- 
duces men to leave business yielding a sure living and to take the risks 
from which progress comes ; and if it did lower the reward it would do 
so in taxation for all, not by giving to the workers of the few rich em- 
ployers unearned advantages soon to pass to some form of rent. Nor, 
contrary to expectations now arising with some unionists, will society long 
permit employees of natural monopolies (such as street railways and the 
hard coal industry, which can raise wages by raising prices), to exact 
above market pay by excluding as scabs equally desirable and more 
deserving workers getting far less in other local occupations. Taxation 
of the increment of land or business value arising from society's growth 
will be done for all, not simply for the few who by luck or scheming be- 
come a monopoly's employees. (See pages 142, 250, 350, 368.) Prof. J. B. 
Clark's suggestion (a departure from his searching individualism), that 
in a compulsory investigation law the returning striker be given a right 
to his position — will not be accepted by unionists under the cost of such a 
guarantee (page 387). Ownership by the city, which, unlike ownership 
by the state or nation, unionists do not fear, feeling able to control it with 
the labor vote, can succeed and continue only where favors to labor are not 
exacted. The profit sharing that Alfred Mosely thinks will settle the labor 
problem will be (above the welfare policy it pays the employer to follow) 
only the present sharing in the highest wages to be borne by the employer 
on the margin. In these cases the demand for pay above market wages is 
a demand for a share of the earnings of capital — a demand to be made 
by gift a capitalist, since a continuing right to earnings would be the same 
as ownership. In the price offered for its use the need for a factor of pro- 
duction is determined in the cases of land, capital, and management on the 
same just principles that rule in the case of labor. Whatever society may 
do for a worker, justice to others, and the salvation of him and itself from 
ruin, forbid that it shall ever buy labor on other than supply and demand 
values. On any other basis, to earn loses its meaning. 



Combination and Liberty. 759 

nature under the same conditions of working and trading-, and 
in view of the evidently lasting incompatibility between collec- 
tive industry and liberty/ it seems unlikely that if liberty and 

^The Union Becomes the Guild. This incompatibility appears, not only 
in the conduct of all large industries by the state in Russia until recently 
because the people were not yet sufficiently civilized for private enterprise, 
nor in the state system of Rome after civilization had declined, but it 
appears also in mediaeval guilds and present day trade unions, and in the 
present necessity for enforcing obedience and stopping intrigue among 
public employees. The trade union, in proportion to its power, heads 
straight for the guild's exploitation of workers excluded and consumers 
overcharged, and for the guild's fettering of its own members. New York 
plasterers refused to handle imported castings, and different unions have 
refused to use material made outside of the city or to work with men from 
outside. Granite cutters, chiefly with the strike and boycott power of shut- 
ting off a supply of stone, have lately coerced forces of a dozen men in 
small cities not unionized to join in a body, changing at once the pay from 
$2.50 to $3 and the hours from 9 to 8, the loss falling mainly on consumers 
in inability to bear higher prices (page 151), and on local cutters in less 
work. Cases have risen repeatedly of late in New York state in which a 
union member had to appeal to the courts to prevent (or to get money 
damages for) expulsion contrary to union rules, with the consequent ex- 
clusion from his means of getting a living. In view of the coercion in 
joining, and of a single member's slight influence on a majority, this state 
of affairs is destructive to liberty. 

Majority Rule is For a Few Things, such as governing, which are not 
to be performed individually. It is generally oligarchical after all, being 
the rule of a few leaders, as illustrated by political bosses. Not many are 
so decided and brave as to take a stand against false loyalty to a cause. 
The Coeur d'Alene miners' union, which was in effect a band of desper- 
adoes, was believed to consist mainly of good men overawed. Society has 
no greater danger than that tyranny of the multitude which condemns those 
having the moral courage to openly judge a cause or custom. [Independent, 
July 9, 16, 1903.) That Americans are in danger of being enslaved to the 
despot of organization or mass power is shown in an epidemic of unpro- 
voked lynchings, in one of which, at Evansville, Ind., threat of union 
boycott led merchants to discharge five militiamen who, firing on a des- 
perate attacking mob, were "as much soldiers in the cause of liberty as any 
patriot who fell at Bunker Hill" (Gov. Durbin). 

The Right to Employ Non-Unionists, won by united employers in the 
great contests of 1903 in Denver, Omaha, and elsewhere, and preserved in 
the coal strike award, will be greatly extended by public opinion when it is 
perceived that their exclusion is socially dangerous if it requires exercise of 
much power, so that they are not hired where just regard of values and 
merits requires that they be chosen. But refusal to work with non-unionists 



760 Getting a Living, 

progress are to continue there can ever be more collectivism 
than municipal ownership of local service monopolies, and per- 
haps eventually national ownership of telegraphs, railroads, 
mines, forests, and a few similar natural monopolies that may 
arise in the future ; while even in these lines collectivism will be 
a failure in America until the state becomes a vastly more effi- 
cient employer than it is now, and the people learn to rule in- 
stead of being ruled by a political machine or bureaucracy. 
And the living for others that Henry Wood predicts (though 
the mad pursuit of money will quickly be changed when people 
increase their appreciation of faithful service in governing and 
teaching) can never approach the effort of the mother for the 
children, yet not without penalty on them and all others can she 
relieve them from the necessity of deserving by individually 
earning. By the deepest view, in continued business dealings 
between even brothers of the same family, the ethical and 
Christian motive of seeking the highest good of others and of 
society requires the same conduct as does the economic motive 
of getting just dues (pages 94, 146).^ Never, it seems evident, 

does not dangerously subject men to license by the union, or give it the life 
and death power Mr. Hewitt feared, if under full suppression by law of 
violence or intimidation, and by public opinion of boycotting or undue 
ostracism, the worker in leaving the union and the employer in hiring are 
given the adequate freedom that then exists. The union's power is then kept 
within bounds of social safety. The uniting of employers with non-union- 
ists to meet unionism, done successfully in 1903 at Muncie, Ind., and the 
forming of counter unions of non-unionists (the Independent American 
Mechanics), done lately at a few places in Indiana and New York, but a 
repeated failure in past years in England, — need not be necessary if public 
opinion does its duty. Neither will combination of consumers and non- 
unionists against joint exploitation by unions and trusts, as in the glass 
trades. The old notion, that nearly all combining was conspiracy, seems 
nearer the truth than the present craze of combining to engage in or resist 
exploitation, 

^Brotherhood and Self-interest. In this important sense, it seems. 
Sir Henry Maine's belief (Ely, "Industrial Society"), that economic 
motives will more and more displace sympathy and brotherhood, must 
come true if society is to be rid of the injury arising from harmful charity 
in many forms, and from weak indulgence by persons of their children 
and relatives. But hard bargaining, instead of being justified, as the old 
economists are said to have taught or implied, will be largely abolished, 
and in the only way, by removing the helplessness that tempts the strong 



Combination and Liberty. 7^^ 

is there to be a means of escape from drinking to the dregs the 
cup of paying in some way for what one receives. But, never- 
theless, 

Is Not Nature's System Good Enough? Who, that has a 
right to be considered, wants more than justice? For ascer- 
taining what justice and wisdom are in the conditions to be met, 
what better vantage ground could be desired than is now pos- 
sessed by the heirs of all the ages, in an experience and a. 
common sense that for most requirements need but slightly to 
be supplemented by economic and social science ? The labor 

to exploit [p. 510) — by making people too capable and self-reliant to be 
imposed on, so that everywhere self-interest and morality together will 
make the honest policy of the golden rule prevail as it now does in whole- 
sale trade. And brotherhood will be made vastly more fruitful for good, 
by being raised above heedless charity or indulgence toward the level of 
the wise parent's self-sacrificing care (p. 607). 

Working for the Good of Others, socialism's ideal, is now followed 
as far as is safe, and will be a stronger motive when it is more appre- 
ciated. Useful knowledge in books on economics, and valuable discoveries 
in chemistry, are given to society by men of thought for less pay than their 
board. Their rew^ard comes in honor, in preparation for other work, and 
in the satisfaction of delivering their message. It is well for them, and 
for the state, to impart free the chemical knowledge for making a mixture 
to kill potato bugs, but to give free potatoes would involve ruinous pauper- 
ization (p. 89). It would be hard to improve on the justice appearing 
naturally in price. Only things having no money value to the individual 
can be given free, such as general knowledge, and then there must be pay 
for books, and for direct services of teacher or doctor. Receiving free the 
services of even the preacher would sap the Christianity of a congregation 
not destitute. Improved cooking utensils would not be cared for by 
women not bearing the sacrifice of paying for them. Plums from trees in 
one's yard cannot be given to a neighbor to the extent of much money 
value. He w^ants them neither as a needy person nor with the obligation 
of returning the favor. He can take many of them only when they are 
worthless to the owner. Not to patent for one's self a valuable invention 
made in time not hired by another would usually be wrong. The benefit 
in lower price to consumers would be a trifle to each, and would fall to 
many deserving no aid, while there would be heavy loss to the inventor, 
whose conscientiousness would indicate desire to use wealth for society's 
good. It is strange that J. S. Mill and Prof. Ely ("Social Reform," 1894) 
countenanced so far the idea that industry will never be fully moralized 
until business men follow the motive of the soldier. In similar services his 
motive prevails now. and about as far as it is good for society. The apos- 
tle's admonition, to covet the best gifts, such as good government, wisdom, 



y(y2 Getting a Living. 

problem's solution^ will be (need one fear to predict?) nothing 
but a raising much further toward perfection, without material 
change, of the present system of doing all that resources per- 
mit toward making known and prevalent every phase of truth 
and justice, toward teaching and enabling every human crea- 
ture to get from his powers the most good by rendering the 
most service, and toward making all conditions as favorable as 
possible for living the good and successful life. From increase 
of knowledge, efficiency, honesty, and reasoning capacity, the 
general tendency will be that, as not by swindling, neither by 
appeal for favor in lenience of accounting, will men attempt to 
get value without full payment in return, but will seek that 
accuracy of accounting which is desired by conscious merit. 
Nature's plan of requiring from mankind an age-long struggle 
to reach civilization, of requiring intense thought and labor for 
utilizing her forces, minerals, and productive powers, and of 
making the necessity for intelligence increase with its growth, 
— indicates that for getting a living and obtaining justice no 
easier means than the present system improved can ever be 
expected, and that with no easier means could there be a con- 
tinuance unimpaired of intelligence, morality, and liberty. 

and spiritual religion — all of which may be given largely free, — is not 
heeded by those who most need them, especially the complaining poor. For- 
tunately, there is now general readiness to make good use of trade instruc- 
tion furnished partly free, and the technical schools to be founded in different 
cities by C. M. Schwab can scarcely fail to be of great and lasting benefit. 

^"Justice to labor, equitable distribution of profits under some system 
which I feel sure will supersede the present, and without resort to social- 
ism" — these are words of Carroll D. Wright in 1893 ; but their connection 
with trade instruction and just welfare institutions indicates that his "ele- 
ments of solution, clearly discernible," were not different from those out- 
lined in this chapter, which seem to prove improbable a supersession of the 
present system. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Lyman, pages 203, 701 

Adams, Charles Francis, 716-18 

Adams, Judge E. B., 577 

Addams, Jane, 114, 327, 495-8, 527, 609, 
644, 663 

Aged men, as affected by modern indus- 
try, 293, 340, 2,7Z, 380-91, 424, 512, 
581-99, 611, 668 

American Federation of Labor, 166-72, 
235, 251-2, 327, 392-8, 402, 488-92, 504, 
515. 550, 568, 645, 654, 740, 752 

Apprenticeship, 156-8, 289, 299-329, 341, 
452, 742 

Arbitration, 690-762 

Aristocracy, 19, 22, 27, 121, 135, 192-4, 
249, 351-4, 491-9, 641-74, 724, 753-62. 

Association, in trades and classes, 80-82, 
90-96, 154, 160, 184-95, 203, 222, 22,2,, 
263, 290, 297-9, 326-8, 559, 642-57, 
719-62. See also Competition 

Atkinson, Edward, 359, 363, 384 

Australasia, land laws of, 20, 29; trade 
unionism in, 169, 190, 234, 503, 707; 
government activities in, 68, 337-43, 
395-9, 415, 521, 530, 616-22, 701-15, 
751-5; shorter day in, 403, 412, 420, 
438, 448; pensions of, 584-99 

Austria, cooperation in, 75; guilds of, 
156, 704; labor and wages in, 171, 
406, 437-8, 485, 521, 616; government 
policy of, 584-5 

Baer, G. F., 205, 754 

Baker, Ray Stannard, 5S5 

Baldwin Locomotive Works, 312-14, 743 

Belgium, cooperation in, 75, 82, 118; 
labor and wages in, 171, 397, 403-6, 
460, 481, 485; trade schools of, 313, 
327; pensions of, 585-6; socialism in, 
397-9, 622 

Bemis, E. W., 7;^, 75, 302, 314-^9 

Benefit societies, 102-15, 174-5, 189, 381 

Bernstein, Eduard, 358, 656 

Betts, Lillian, 526 

Blacklisting, 222-28, 243, 281, 544, 559, 
570-79, 721 

Bliss, W. D. P., 292 



Bolles, A. S., 441 

Bogart, E. L., 237 

Bonuses for new industries, 16, 21, 506- 

507 
Booth, Charles, 164, 582, 587-92 
Boulton, A. J., 309 
Boycotting, 78, 139, 198, 214-23, 233, 

243, 279-80, 391, 441-5, 501, 503-15. 

543-4, 548-80, 605, 645, 679, 716, 739- 

759 
Brewer, Justice D. J., 5S0 
Brooks, J. G., 82, 112, 189, 252, 281, 

367, 442, 505, 529, 583, 622-5, 639, 

660-63, 672, 748 
Brotherhood. See Morality, and Phil- 
anthropy 
Bryan, \V. J., 429 
Bullock, C. J., 225 
Bureaucracy, 20, 340, 521, 591,601,712, 

752-62 
Burns, John, 237, 581 

Caldwell, Judge H. C, 222, 558 

Campbell, Helen, 486 

Canada, taxation in, 21; labor and wages 

in, 168, 627, 635, 750-55 
Capital, relation of, to other factors, i, 

37, 40, 50, 60, 84, 123-9, 142, 250, 326, 

347, 3S2-9, 370, 387, 408-20, 461-3. 

715; increase of, 8, 36, 44-6, 248, 353- 

64, 378, 396; relation of to the shorter 

day, 408-20, 447 
Carnegie, Andrew, 60, no, 119, 141, 250, 

347, 649 
Casson, H. X., 187, 189, 191, 642 
Caste, 114, 193, 202, 494-9, 635-74 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 145, 589 
Charity, pauperism, pauperization, 33, 64, 

111-14, 144, 180, 274-5, 293-5, 340-41, 

350, 380-83, 389-90, 432-3, 484-7, 506- 

22, 534-46, 581-626, 648-74 
Chetlain, Judge, 212, 569 
Child labor, 135, 182, 188, 314, 323, 336, 

342, 375, 422, 440, 468-74, 513, 518- 

29, 654 
China, wages and poverty in, 31, 134, 

377, 427, 481; guilds of, 156 



{7(>Z) 



764 



Index. 



Chinese, as traders, 24; in America, 239, 

316, 391, 496, 505-9, 665 
Christianity and religion, 41, 92-6, 144- 

51, 205, 293, 355, 361, 394-9, 444, 461, 

543-5, 601-57, 760. See also Morality- 
Cities, overcrowding and dependence in, 

33, 91, 264, 331, 357, 390-95, 437, 506- 

22, 617-39, 658-74; as trade centres, 9, 

168, 370-75, 531, 597 
Civic Federation, 598, 699, 734-7 
Clark, E. E., 214, 219 
Clark, J. B., ix., 66, 133, 2^, 365, 625, 

701, 717, 744, 758 
Glass lines and class feeling, 136, 165, 

172-7, 187, 203, 240, 288-93, 305, 326, 

392, 460, 545, 564, 575, 641-74, 738-62. 
Cleveland, Grover, 238, 250, 699 
Coal Strike Commission, 214-24, 240-41, 

456, 698, 717, 736-44, 751-9 
Coeur d'Alene strikes, 215, 239-49, 549, 

571, 759 
Cokely, M., 433 
Collective bargaining, 120, 196-207, 254, 

^77, 455, 700-746 
Collett, Miss, 492 
Combination. See Association 
Commons, J. R., 515, 625, 72'/-2,7 
Communism, 72, 92, 399, 601, 652, 660 
Company stores, houses, etc., 102-13, 250, 

380, 531-3, 574 
Competition, 19, 53, 62-5, 93-5, 125, 148, 

181-4, 210, 261, 274, 285, 293-8, 346, 

363, 383-5, 400, 422, 441-5, 455-67, 

601-2, 677-84, 721, 731. See also As- 
sociation and Fittest 
Compulsory arbitration, 701-19, 750-62 
Conciliation, 690-745 
Conspiracy, 158-65,194,199,210-26, 233, 

542-3, 548-80, 642-6, 721, 738-62 
Consumers' responsibility, 501-22, 747 
Consumption of wealth, 41, 132, 262, 

304-6, 326, 332, 375-7, 426-34, 450-67, 

664 
Contract system of labor, 67, 256, 271-6, 

507-22, 533-9, 680 
Cooperation, 67-96, 274, 743, 757 
Cooperative communities, -^2, 92-6, 164, 

601. See also Communism 
Corporations, 41, 44, 85, 116, 121, 242, 

287, 318, 352, 365, 532, 671, 688, 722- 

.762 
Crosby, E. H., 358-60, 375 
Cunniff, M. G., 277, 367, 746 
Darrow, C. S., 734 
Debs, E. v., 398, 548-71 
Democracy, 65, 77, 112-15, 191, 280, 326, 

371, 397, 495-9, 625, 641-74, 691, 745, 

753-62 



Denmark, farming in, 26, 32, 318; co- 
operation in, 75, 80; pensions of, 584- 
592 

Depression in business, and panics, 128, 
248, 375, 429, 446-67, 613-26, 632 

Desmoulins, M., 687 

Discontent, z^, 79, I35, 249-52, 355-65» 
390-96, 663-74 

Distribution of wealth, i, 36, 50, 84-6, 
117-20, 249, 344-66, 393, 415-25, 447» 
461-7, 531, 582, 661, 671-4, 694, 753- 
762 

Drage, Geoffrey, 244, 357-9, 412, 456, 
479, 623 

Dunbar, W. H., 568 

Durand, E. D., 749 

Durbin, W. T., 572, 759 



Easley, R. M., 208, 26.7, 286, 699, 733 

Education, as the chief remedy for so- 
ciety's ills, vii., 35, 47-8, 66, 89-95, 
108, 120, 136, 151, 276-94, 318, 347, 
371, 390, 397, 412, 463, 483, 498, 514- 
22, 593, 603-74, 745, 762; from union- 
ism, 136, 172, 187-91, 251, 324, 733; 
in trade schools, 303, 309-26, 474, 617- 
26, 650, 761 

Edwards, Clement, 284, 410 

Eliot, C. W., 202, 385, 667, 699 

Ely, R. T., 95, 112, 114, 466, 602, 612, 
625, 648, 652, 709, 718, 747-61 

Emerick, C. F., 370 

Emigration, 20, 33, 335, 341, 417, 447, 
612-26 

Employer, function of, 51, 59, 84, 141-5, 
27Z, 350, 456-67, 520, 715, 756; how 
far to blame for labor troubles, 179- 
82, 242, 250, 348, 496, 693-6, 740-44; 
duty of in apprenticeship, 307-27, 743; 
liability of for accidents to employees, 
103-8, 584, 594 

Employers' associations, 717-62 

Employment, security in, 8, 52, 198, 243, 
294, 339, 366-8, 372-3, 379-92, 541-5; 
lack of, 263-5, 331, 339-42, 417, 426, 
446-67, 582, 598, 613-26, 683 

Employment offices, 535, 616-26 

Emory, Frederic, 283 

England and Great Britain, land tenure 
in, 3-30, 626, 662; cooperation in, 68- 
96; profit sharing in, 97, loi; interest 
rates in, 43; labor, wages, unionism, 
and strikes in, 129-37, 154-76, 209-12, 
230, 254, 281-8, 330-39, 365, 427, 435- 
8, 447-60, 472-99, 503-21, 692-737; ap- 
prenticeship and trade schools in, 299, 
317-25; present labor laws of, 161,209- 



Index. 



765 



II, 222, 357, 374, 435-8, 521-99, 122\ 

liberty in, 156, 412, 438, 443, 590; 
shorter work day in, 401-48; poverty 
in, Z2, I2g-Z7, 182, 249, 331, 357-9. 
378, 519, 530, 581-99, 612, 622-37,667- 
70; public ownership in, 395, 751-3; 
socialism in, 336, 398; wealth and pro- 
duction in, 25, 282-5, 305, 334-6, 370, 
376, 416, 582 

Equality, 90-96, 121, 249-51, 260, 292-4, 
353, 376, 394-9, 491-9, 641-74, 73,7, 743- 
See also Democracy, and Aristocracy 

Ethics, relation of to economics, 134, 
145, 250, 355, 368, 389, 652, 743 

Fabian Society, 47 

Famines, 31, 131, 370, 454 

Farming, as affected by land tenure, i, 
6, 22, 25; depression in, 10, 378; co- 
operation in, 80; improvement in, 34, 
370, 454, 625; for relief of city poor, 
32, 382, 517, 626, 670; labor and wages 
in, 139, 148, 186, 331-3, 405, 422, 474; 
effect of on social well-being, 497, 66y 
74, 743-8 

Feudalism, 26, 154-6, 295, 356, 365, 650 

Fittest, selection and survival ot, 53, 64, 
99, 143, 260-5, 288, 293-8, 3S3, 501, 
669. See also Competition 

Foreigners, in unions, 191, 327, 733; in 
America, 242, 263, 364, 376, 391, 489, 
502-12, 624, 665, 676 

France, land tenure in, 25-8; coopera- 
tion and profit sharing in, 73-94, 10 1, 
118; thrift in, 31, 44, 586, 664; offi- 
cialism in, and lack of enterprise, 20, 
662, 687; labor and wages in, 171, 186, 
336, 357, 403-6, 437-8, 446, 450, 460, 
478, 481, 540, 596, 616, 693, 706, 757; 
trade schools of, 313, Z27; socialism 
in, 397, 622; pensions of, 584-6 

Fraser, J. F., 283 

Freedman, Justice J. J., 563 

Fuller, Chief Justice M. W., 571 

Gaynor, Justice W. J., 557 
(•eorge, Henry, 7-23, 133, 357, 6'^6 
Germany, land tenure in, 28; coopera- 
tion in, 73-80, 306; profit sharing in, 97, 
101, no; labor and wages in, 171, 406, 
427-9, 460, 528, 540, 616, 693, 704, 
743; governmental policy of, 156, 315, 
335, 374, 585-91, 751-5; trade educa- 
tion in, 325-6, 524; poverty and wealth 
in, 135, 358, 529, 612, 6z7, 685; so- 
cialism in, 397, 672; pensions of, 583- 
99 
Ghent, W. J., 34, 318, 356 
Giffen, Robert, 357, 364, 376, 481 



Gilman, N. P., 73, 80, no, 1 13-14, 183, 

590 
Gladden, Washington, 626 
Goff, Judge N., 568 
Gompers, Samuel, 166-7, 212, 219, 224, 

252, 423, 598, 643, 699, 701, 748, 750 
Good, T., 283 
Goodman, Inez A., 492 
Government, burden of, 20, 685-7, 753 
Government ownership, of land, 7-30; of 

monopolies, 47, 88, 121, 253, 274, 351, 

395-9, 462-7, 630, 750-62 
Gray, Judge George, 730 
Grosscup, Judge Peter S., 119, 574 
Guilds, 154-6, 281-6, 293-9, 306, 324, 

371, 720-26, 739-59 
Gunton, George, 426-8, 470, 524, 578 

Hadley, A. T., 21-7, 42-6, 99, 131, 293, 
588, 720 

Hall, F. S., 230, 235, 645 

Hammond, M. B., 480 

Harlan, Justice J. JNI., 560, 709 

Harland, Marion, 491 

Harrah, C. J., 312, 743 

Henderson, C. R., 612, 636, 674 

Herron, G. D., 355 

Hillis, N. D., 203 

Flirsch, Max, 22 

Hobson, J. A., 5, 42-4, 90, 134, 145, 188, 
292-4, 382-4, 431, 455, 461, 467-84, 511, 
518, 666, 701, 753-4 

Holland, achievements of, 26, 318, 634- 
5; cooperation in, 80; interest rates in, 
43; strikes in, 397, 755 

Holmes, Justice O. W., 223, 563 

Home life, as affected by modern indus- 
try, 32-4, 79, 101-20, 242-3, 356-9, 364, 
374, 385-96, 412, 441, 469, 486-99, 526- 

30, 612, 670 

Home or household manufacturing, 272, 

404, 486, 507-22 
Homesteads from free land, 2, 34 
Homestead strike, 215, 229, 238-41, 250, 

571, 736 
Hours of labor. See Shorter Work Day 
Howell, George, 207 
Hutchinson, J. G., 283 
Hyde, Wm. DeWitt, 146 

Immigration. See Foreigners 

India, land tenure in, 24-6; famines in, 

31, 620; production and wages in, 134, 
370, 377, 406, 481, 634, 665, 710 

Individualism. See Liberty and Self- 

Reliance 
Inheritance, 14, 26-7, 39, 64, 142, 249- 

53, 347, 352-7. 462, 487, 611, 661-2 



766 



Index. 



Injunctions, 210-12, 221, 279-80, 535-6, 
546-80, 717, 721-S, 741 

Insurance, cooperative, 80, 105, 295; in 
unions, 174, 263, 291, 381-2; in em- 
ployers' aid funds, 101-15; against ac- 
cident and old age, 386, 540, 581-99; 
against strikes, 741 

Interest, as a share in distribution, i, 
17. 36-50, 250, 461, 756-9; falling of, 
42, 346, 363-8; under the shorter day, 
417-20 

Inventions. See Production 

Ireland, Archbishop John, 244, 638, 697 

Ireland, land question in, x., 13, 19, 28, 
31, 387; famines in, 31, 623; recent 
progress of, 32, 80, 318 

Italy, cooperation in, 67, 79; labor and 
poverty in, 135, 481, 611, 685, 755; 
pensions of, 586 

Jackson, Judge J. J., 562-4. 577-8 

Japan, 156, 457 

Jenkins, Judge J. G., 549-61 

Jenks, J. W., 24 

Job, F. W., 735 

Johnson, Emory R., 106, 566 

Jordan, David Starr, 666 

Keller, Judge B. R, 563, 578 
Knights of Labor, 73, 166, 174, 189,233, 
251. Z92 

Laissez faire, 184, 440, 527 

Land, tenure of, 6, 10, 14, 24-6, 46; use 
of, II, 22, 32, 243, 516, 626, 670; ac- 
cess to, as affecting wages, 9, 22, 186, 
194, 447, 745 

Laws concerning labor, 66, 135, 157-65, 
183,. 194, 209-28, 233, 238-52,264,275, 

294. 300, 306, 334-43, 357-8, 374, 397, 
402-6, 413-19, 434-45, 474, 5ii-99, 603, 
613-30, 648, 671-762 

Leavitt, J. B., 386, 574 

Levasseur, Emile, 133, 238, 312, 356, 

360, 410, 416, 421, 459, 756-8 
Levi, Leone, 358 
Liberty, and tyranny, 11, 20, 28, 61,65, 

108, 112, 156, i77-:8, 194, 206, 213-21, 

295, 318, 324, 343, 357, 387-8, 436-45, 
458, 466, 521-80, 600-3, 642-5, 705-20, 
737-62 

Libraries and industrial education, 189, 

141, 311-12, 317, 519 
Lindsay, S. M., 106, 108, 228 
Liquor traffic, 189, 306, 444, 452. See 

also Temperance 
Lloyd, H. D., z-^ 169, 442, 584, 592-3, 

622, 701-15 



Lockouts, 228-32, 544-5, 692, 719 
Longmuir, Percy, 145, 318, 327 
Lynch, George, 284 

Macarthur, W., 425, 701 

Machinery, effects of, 37, 58, 84, 121, 
138, 181, 188, 306, 335, 363-78, 453, 
461-7, 472-6, 516, 677; union policies 
concerning, 252-5, 278-88, 367; rela- 
tion of to the shorter day, 408-24 

Macrosty, H. W., 701-4 

MacVeagh, Wayne, 673 

Mallock, W. H., 649 

Mann, Tom, 341 

Manual training, 316-26, 373 

Marburg, Theodore, 597 

Markham, Edwin, 390, 658 

Marshall, Alfred, 419, 423, 635 

Martin, John, 267-8, 366-7, 373, 642 

McCook, J. J., 624, 628 

McNeill, George E., 429 

Militia, use of in strikes, 239-47, 555-7, 
567, 717, 752, 759 

Miller, Kelly, 191 

Mitchell, John, 215, 246, 292, 410, 732, 
742 

Money, 37, 127, 333, 336, 429, 450, 
456-7, 464, 638 

Monopolies and trusts, 20, 29, 47, 66, 90, 
96, 120, 125, 141, 22,2, 24S-7, 272, 
334, 351, 364-8, 388, 411, 432, 457, 
462-7, 671, 718, 756 

Monopolizing land, employment, or 
trade, 11-33, ^99, 203, 215, 236, 280- 
9, 298, 301-26, 366-8, 378, 434, 506, 
541, 594, 643, 684, 721, 739, 746-8 

Morality, fraternity, brotherhood, 60, 
88-96, 111-15, 144-6, 154, 172, 187-9, 
198, 203, 242-3, 260, 292-7, 328, 355, 
384, 388, 392, 454, 461, 501-14, 531- 
565,- 601-74, 7:^7-62. See also Chris- 
tianity and Philanthropy 

Morgan, J. P., 143, 698 

Mormons, 72, 76, 81-3, 601 

Mosely, Alfred, 284, 376, 524, 758 

Munger, Judge W. H., 216, 564, 577 

Negroes in indust'-y, 56, 135, 150, 243, 
316-19, 356, 391, 477, 632-7, 658,674, 
680, 746 

New Zealand. See Australasia 

O'Brien, Judge Denis, 533 
Output, limitation of by unions, 281-8, 
734-5, 741, 751-2 

Padrone system, 513, 726 
Panics. See Depression. 



Index, 



767 



Parasitism, 19, 22, 142, 250, 306, 352, 
502, 518, 532, 608 

Parry, D. M., 740 

Partnership, relation of to cooperation, 
67, 85, 274; between employer and 
employees, 278, 757 

Paternalism. See Self-reliance and Wel- 
fare Institutions 

Peabody, F. G., 191, 355, 608-10, 652-5 

Pearson, C. H., 414, 744 

Pensions, for employees, 103, 107, 295, 
366-8, 380, 581-99; in unions, 174; for 
old soldiers, zi^-, Z^^, 547, 611 

Peters, J. P., 289, 578 

Pettingill, Lillian, 495 

Philanthropy, 19, 32-5, 68, 78, 83-92, 105- 
19, 135, 141-6, 187, 319-22, 347, 382, 
396, 514-19, 609, 630, 649-74, 742, 761 

Philippine Islands, 24, 634, 665 

Picketing, 208-16, 236-48, 299, 551-80, 
717, T22, >4I 

Piece work, 67, 95, 100, 180, 250, 254- 
66, 290, 308, 415, 421, 458, 665, 740, 
749 

Politics, influence of wage workers upon, 
58, 140, 161-76, 186-95, 212, 238, 247, 
2-7l-^, 336-43, 357, 396-99,411-15,482, 
509-99, 613-31, 654, 671-762; burden 
of upon citizens to secure good gov- 
ernment, 46-9, 88, 318, 354, 361, -^13, 
462-7, 630, 668-74, 683-9, 738-62 

Population, as crowding land, 6-1 1, 46, 

61, 129-35, 150, 336, 364. 380, 447, 
452, 476; as crowding into cities, 31-3, 
264, 331, 395, 437, 512, 621, 663-74 

Potter, Bishop H. C, 697-9, 747 
Poverty, and the single tax, 7-9; in 
England, 32, 135, 182-5, 330-31, 357- 
9, 581-99; continuance of, 121, 355- 

62, 385, 507-22, 601-74 
Premium wages, 100, 734, 740, 742 
Price, uniform for all, 40, 63; relation 

43, 360-65,411-34, 447-67,508; fall of, 
138, 354-78, 450; fixed by law, 19, 158, 
ZZ1\ how affected by rent, 3, 149; by 
cost of production, 3, 6, 44, 129, 675- 
89; by shorter day, 416-34, 447; by 
of to wages, 125, 135, 140, 152, 330- 
kind and quantity of money, 333, 430, 
450, 457, 464; by union label, 505-15 

Prison labor, 318, 321, 382, 617-26, 675- 
89 

Production, factors of, i, 2>1 ^ So, 60, 
119, 347; improvement of, 58, 134-8, 
187, 294, 305, 316, 335, 353-83, 453, 
475, 637; under the shorter day, 405- 
34; under socialism, 45, 52, 338-9, 
347, 389, 462-7 



Professions and their charges, 90, 281, 
304-9, 431-3, 666 

Profits, as a share in distribution, 50- 
55, 250, 350, 461, 693, 756-9; effect of, 
59-66, 353-4; variation of, 125, 135, 
143, 150; falling of, 346, 363; hostil- 
ity toward of socialists and cooperat- 
ors, 64,87,95; under the shorter day, 
416-25, 446-67 

Profit sharing, 71, 87, 97-122, 758 

Pullman company and strike, 112, 233-4, 
250, 420, 548-71, 605, 644, 669 

Quimby, A. W., 492 

Rae, John, 410, 426, 438, 448 

Railways, relief departments of, 102-8; 

labor of, 105-8, 172, 208, 22-], 247, 

308-11, 341, 369, 397, 437-42, 544-80, 

710, 718-19, 750-55 
Recognition of the union, 107-9, 113, 

120, 247, 292-8, 2>2-], 388, 558, 655-6, 

729-42 
Rent, in ancient times, 57; as a share in 

distribution, 2-7, 50, 123, 142, 149, 378, 

447, 461, 756-9 
Richmond, jNIary E., 486 
Riis, Jacob A., 264 
Rogers, Judge J. H., 575 
Rome, reasons for her decline, 19, 499, 

606, 635, 674, 753, 759 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 22, 219, 414, 456, 

490, 527, 572, 63s, 660, 698, 751-2 
Ross, E. A., 744 
Ross, Judge E. M., 560 
Rowntree, B. S., 145, 582 
Russia, land tenure in, 28; cooperation 

in, 67, 75; wages and labor in, x., 31, 

134, 171, 398, 422-7, 438, 481, 629, 

708-9 ; officialism in and government 

policy of, 20, 335, 754-9 

Salmon, Lucy M., 499 

Saloon keepers and wage workers, 113, 

189, 503, 533, 608, 629, 657 
Salter, W. M., 490 
Sanger, C. P., 391 
Sargent, Frank, 208, 566 
Satterlee, Bishop H. Y., 497 
Saving, necessity for and benefits of, 34- 

44, 60, 79, 116, 253, 358, 396, 450, 585- 

99, 604, 635-7, 655-74 
Scabs and scabbing, 196-216, 236-47,297- 

8, 326-9, 572, 642-5, 738-62 
Schloss, D. F., loi 
Scudder, Vida D., 113-15, i44, 203, 642, 

657 674 
Schwab, C. :M., 761 
Self-reliance, necessity for, 20, 33-5, 60, 



768 



Index. 



64, 93, 136, 188, 264, 2^6, 292, 372, 
381-4, 392, 442-s, 458, 486-7, 513-22, 
530, 547, 585-99, 658-74, 687, 712, 738- 
62 

Seligman, E. R. A., 365, 758 

Serfdom, 28, 61, 154-6, 178, 192, 387, 
513, 674, 709, 744 

Servants, in unions, 170, 488; servant 
problem, 485, 491-9, 517, 633, 660 

Shakers, 72, 93, 395, 601 

Share owning by employees, 69, 72, 116, 
757 

Sheldon, C. M., 497 

Shorter work day, 136, 157, 182, 190, 
341, 356, 366, 400-448, 495, 536-41, 
597, 734 

Slavery, 13, 19, 48, 61, 86, 136, 154, 178, 
192-4, 24s, 295, 634, 649, 706 

Smart, William, 456, 461, 477-9, 633, 758 

Smiles, Samuel, 136, 644 

Smith, F. Hopkinson, 396 

Socialists, Christian, 68, 86, 399, 484 

Socialism, relation toward of H. George, 
7, 16; doctrines of, 16, 40, 50, 55, 62, 
111-18, 134, 260, 292-3, 355, 365, 383, 
399, 446, 588-94, 617-74; good results 
of, 30, 54, 66, 252, 393-6, 460; how 
far attainable, 46, 88, 274, 394-5, 466; 
production under, 45-8, 51, 389-95, 412, 
462-7; relation of to cooperation, yj, 
86; relation of to unionism, 159, 172, 
252, 274, 292, 2>Z7> 399, 646; incom- 
patible with liberty or justice, 86, 
98, 118, 339, 373, 466, 600-3, 750-62; 
in Australasia, 338, 594, 712; growth 
of in different countries, 391-9, 585; 
as fostering discontent, 79, 355, 390; 
change in for the better, 252, 358, 
397, 622, 639, 656, 672 

Spahr, C. B., yz, 238, 289, 412, 421, 424, 
497 

Spalding, Bishop John L., 214, 697 

Speculation, 16, 18, 53, 375, 456-67 

Standard of living, 129, 137, 151, 257-8, 
332, 426-34, 449, 470, 477, 482, 520, 
540 

Stead, W. T., 266 

Stelzle, Charles, 647, 656 

Stetson, Mrs. C. P., 490 

Stewart, Ethelbert, 512, 748 

Stimson, F. J., 211, 217-22, 2^2,, 239, 
532, 543-6, 571, 580, 720 

Strikes, in general, 158, 165-75, 196-250, 
442-5, 479, 652, 691-3; sympathetic, 
229-37, 560, 642-5, 699, 734-6; in rail- 
way work, 107, 213, 22y, 235, 247, 340- 
41, 397, 548-80, 705-10, 750-62; under 
profit sharing, loi, iii; for political 



purposes, x., 159, 171, 233, 332, 397; 

where unlawful, 708-11 
Sunday work and Sunday laws, 270, 

404-9, 444, 530, 645, 747 
Sweating and the sweated, 144, 179, 195, 

255, 267, 274, 336, 340-49, 404, 441, 

461, 507-22, 538, 712 
Switzerland, surviving primitive com- 
munities in, 26; profit sharing in, 97; 

government policies of, 584-5, 598; 

trade schools of, 313, 325, 524 
Sympathy, sentimentalism, 144, 292-5, 

355, 383-9, 486-7, 507-22, 591-94, 603- 

74, 696, 760 

Taff Vale case, 211, 533, 722 

Taft, Judge W. H., 224, 548, 560-61 

Tariff protection, 139-40, 253,302-6,316, 
336, 352, 378, 452-4, 462, 506, 519, 531, 
593, 598, 671-4, 679-83, 745 

Taussig, F. W., 131 

Taxation, of land, 7, 12, 21, 35, 341; of 
incomes, inheritances, and franchises, 
47, 90, 120, 253, 352, 357-8, 462, 593, 
671, 758; burden of, 685-7 

Taylor, Benjamin, 283 

Temperance, and drunkenness, 115, 136, 
189, 297, 374, 412, 430, 582, 613, 624- 
35, 667, 745. See also Liquor Traffic 

Tenantry, 3, 19, 24-34 

Tipping, III, 114, 142, 506, 604-6 

Tolman, W. H., 113, 486 

Trade agreements. See Collective Bar- 
gaining 

Trade unionism, history of, 154-76; ne- 
cessity for, 109, 120, 177-96, 259, 267- 
78, 298, 441, 520, 564; achievements 
of, 113, 132-5, 158-61, 182-95, 298, 334- 
5, 401-4, 412, 479, 515, 710, 727-Z7, 
746-9; limitations of, 133, 204, 222-6, 
233, 244-51, 285, 326, 332-3 350, 393, 
417-34, 738-62; in railway work, 106-8, 
208, 227, 247, 548-80, 710, 755; in 
public service, 413, 534, 708, 751; ob- 
jection of to incorporation, and to 
compulsory arbitration, 705-26, 750-60; 
policy of toward apprenticeship, 299- 
329, 452; policies of in general, 196- 
329, 332, 391, 449-60, 468-79, 503-80, 
669, 696, 705-62; relations of with 
economists, vii., 132, 192, 441; with 
cooperation, 73, 89, 757; with profit 
sharing, 98, 109-17; with socialism, 
159, 172, 252, 269, 274, 292,381,391- 
9; with women and children as work- 
ers, 468-79; with the church, 640-57; 
with prison labor, 676-89. See als© 
Recognition 



Index. 



769 



Tramps, 56, 613-26 
Trusts. See Monopolies 

Unearned increment of value, 6-18, 23, 
87, 351-3, 368, 387, 462, 758 

Unemployment. See Employment. 

Unfair competition, 182, 196, 271-2, 443- 
S, 460-61, 507, 523-38, 565, 597. 731. 
747 

Union label, 503-15, 534-45. 576 

Unionism. See Trade Unionism 



Value and its causes, 4, 6, 15, dz, 68, 

281, 351, 387, 425-34 
Vanderlip, F. A., 283, 290 
Van Vorst, Mrs., 484, 490, 492 

Wage fund, 130, 448 

Wage slavery, 64, 86, 273-5, 338-9, 387-8 

Wages, as a share in distribution, i, 38, 
65, 85-6, 117-18, 123, 250, 342, 350, 
693, 756-9; what makes the rate of, 
123-153, 330-43, 350, 411-15, 468-522, 
583-99, 604, 609, 633. 675-89, 746-9; 
tendency of downward, 9, 129, 178, 
355; tendency of upward, 9, 125, 185- 
8, 27s, 335, 356-65, 373-8, 450, 473, 
481, 631; as set by the living wage 
idea, 139, 145, 245, 264, 274, 294, 330- 
43, 432; as affected by the shorter 
work day, 405-48; as affected by wage 
earning of women and children, 468- 
76; under cooperation and profit shar- 
ing, 84-117 

Wages and hours in public employment, 



142-5, 2Ti, 354, 412-15, 431-40, 477, 

512, 533-41, 615-26, 750-62 
Walking delegates, 201, 207, 217, z-jt, 

697, 740-42 
War, relation of to progress and to 

unionism, 14, 44, 197-207, 249, 287, 

461, 685, 693, 738-44 
Ward, C. Osborne, 155 
Washington, Booker T., 658 
Wealth. See Production, Distribution, 

and Consumption 
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 47, 68, 70, 

82-6, 155-7, 163-4, 184-9, 193-7, 207-9, 

255-9, 270-80, 286, 298, 302-6, 314, 359, 

376, 383, 419, 437, 442, 467, 472, 480, 

516-23, 589, 664, 683, 758 
Welfare institutions for employees, lOl- 

15, 171, 295, 386, 630, 742 
Weyl, W. E., 729 
White, Henry, "ji, 289 
Willoughby, W. F., 105-6, 584-95, 625 
Wilshire, H, Gaylord, 355, 465 
Wines, F. H., 631-2 
Winston, A. P., 1 13-14 
Women, wage earning by, 308, 314, 342, 

366, 371, 406, 422,468-99,507-22,632; 

its relation to marriage, 468-70, 476, 

481-93; in trade unions, 159, 170,442, 

479-80, 488; labor laws for, 183, 435- 

45, 474, 486-7, 524 
Wood, Henry, 327, 760 
Woods, R. A., 624, 633 
Wright, Carroll D., 115, 134, 214-18, 

235, 241-7, 250-52, 359, 374, 480, 491, 

597, 649, 682, 692-8, 720, 734, j6z 
Wyckoff, W. A., 2TT, 357, 614, 665, 669 



49 



PLAIN FACTS AS TO THF 
TRUSTS AND THE TARIF 

WITH CHAPTERS ON THE %AILROAi^ 
PRO'S LEM & MUNICIPAL MONOPOLIES 

By GEORGE L. BOLEN 

Author of Getting A Living 

Cloth, i2mo., pages 451. $1.50 net, postage 12c. The up-to- 
date book for the general reader on these questions of the hour. 

" It is characterized by an agreeable freshness of treatment and a stimula- 
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to be in the library of every journalist who undertakes to deal with the subject 
of trusts."— Outlook. 

THE MACMILLAN COo, Publishers, 66 Fifth Ave., New York 

H 214 79 



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